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Life  on  the  Mississippi 


BY 


MARK     TWAIN 

AUTHOR     OF     "THE    INNOCENTS    ABROAD,"     "ROUGHING    IT, 
"THE    PRINCE   AND   THE    PAUPER,"     ETC. 


WITH    MORE    THAN    300    ILLUSTRATIONS 


Mississippi  Steamboat  of  Fifty   Years  Ago. 


[Sold  by  Subscription  only.] 


BOSTON 

JAMES    R.    OSGOOD    AND    COMPANY 

1883 


WEk?^THCA«0l^ 


Copyright,  1874  and  1875, 
By  H.  O.  Houghton  and  Company. 

Copyright,  1883, 
By  Samuel  L.  Clemens. 


All  rights  reserved. 


H    X  BY  ^g 

9  I    S.    L.    CLEMENS. 


Mark  Twain. 


[trade  mark.] 


University  Press  : 
John  Wilson  and  Son,  Cambridge 


THE    "BODY    OF    THE    NATION." 


BUT  the  basin  of  the  Mississippi  is  the  Body  of  the  Nation. 
All  the  other  parts  are  but  members,  important  in  themselves,  yet 
more  important  in  their  relations  to  this.  Exclusive  of  the  Lake  basin 
and  of  300,000  square  miles  in  Texas  and  New  Mexico,  which  in  many 
aspects  form  a  part  of  it,  this  basin  contains  about  1,250,000  square 
miles.  In  extent  it  is  the  second  great  valley  of  the  world,  being 
exceeded  only  by  that  of  the  Amazon.  The  valley  of  the  frozen  Obi 
approaches  it  in  extent;  that  of  the  La  Plata  comes  next  in  space, 
and  probably  in  habitable  capacity,  having  about  f  of  its  area;  then 
comes  that  of  the  Yenisei,  with  about  ^  ;  the  Lena,  Amoor,  Hoang-ho, 
Yang-tse-kiang,  and  Nile,  f ;  the  Ganges,  less  than  \ ;  the  Indus, 
less  than  \;  the  Euphrates,  \;  the  Rhine,  -fa.  It  exceeds  in  extent 
the  whole  of  Europe,  exclusive  of  Russia,  Norway,  and  Sweden.  // 
would  contain  Austria  four  times,  Germany  or  Spain  five  times, 
France  six  times,  the  British  Islands  or  Italy  ten  times.  Conceptions 
formed  from  the  river-basins  of  Western  Europe  are  rudely  shocked 
when  we  consider  the  extent  of  the  valley  of  the  Mississippi ;  nor 
are  those  formed  from  the  sterile  basins  of  the  great  rivers  of  Siberia, 
the  lofty  plateaus  of  Central  Asia,  or  the  mighty  sweep  of  the  swampy 
Amazon  more  adequate.  Latitude,  elevation,  and  rainfall  all  combine 
to  render  every  part  of  the  Mississippi  Valley  capable  of  supporting 
a  dense  population.  As  a  dwelling-place  for  civilized  man  it  is  by 
far  the  first  upon  our  globe.  —  Editor's  Table,  Harper's  Magazine, 
February,  1863. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  I. 


The  Mississippi  is  Well  worth  Reading  about.  —  It  is  Remarkable.  —  In- 
stead'of  Widening  towards  its  Mouth,  it  grows  Narrower.  —  It  Empties 
four  hundred  and  six  million  Tons  of  Mud.  —  It  was  First  Seen  in  1542. 

—  It  is  Older  than  some  Pages  in  European  History.  —  De  Soto  has 
the  Pull.  —  Older  than  the  Atlantic  Coast.  —  Some  Half-breeds  chip 
in.— La  Salle  Thinks  he  will  Take  a  Hand 21 

CHAPTER   II. 

La  Salle  again  Appears,  and  so  does  a  Cat-fish.  —  Buffaloes  also.  — 
Some  Indian  Paintings  are  Seen  on  the  Rocks.  —  "The  Father  of 
Waters  "  does  not  Flow  into  the  Pacific. —  More  History  and  Indians. 

—  Some  Curious  Performances — not  Early  English.  —  Natchez,  or 

the  Site  of  it,  is  Approached 31 

CHAPTER  III. 

A  little  History.  —  Early  Commerce.  —  Coal  Fleets  and  Timber  Rafts.  — 
We  start  on  a  Voyage.  —  I  seek  Information.  —  Some  Music. —  The 
Trouble  begins.  — Tall  Talk.  — The  Child  of  Calamity.  —  Ground 
and  lofty  Tumbling. — -The  Wash-up. — Business  and  Statistics. — 
Mysterious  Band.  —  Thunder  and  Lightning.  —  The  Captain  speaks. 

—  Allbright  weeps.  —  The  Mystery  settled.  —  Chaff.  —  I  am  Dis- 
covered. —  Some  Art-work  proposed.  —  I  give  an  Account  of  Myself.  — 
Released 40 

CHAPTER  IV. 

The   Boys'  Ambition.  —  Village   Scenes  —  Steamboat  Pictures.  —  A 

Heavy  Swell.  —  A  Runaway 62 

CHAPTER   V. 
A  Traveller. — A  Lively  Talker.  —  A  Wild-cat  Victim 70 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER   VI. 


Besieging  the  Pilot.  —  Taken  along.— Spoiling  a  Nap.  —  Fishing  for  a 

Plantation.  —  "  Points  "  on  the  River.  —  A  Gorgeous  Pilot-house  .     .       79 


CHAPTER   VII. 

River  Inspectors.  —  Cottonwoods  and  Plum  Point.  —  Hat-Island   Cross- 
ing. —  Touch  and  Go.  —  It  is  a  Go.  —  A  Lightning  Pilot       ....      91 


CHAPTER   VIII. 

A  Heavy-loaded  Big  Gun.  —  Sharp  Sights  in  Darkness. —  Abandoned  to 

his  Fate.  —  Scraping  the  Banks.  —  Learn  him  or  Kill  him     ....     102 


CHAPTER  IX. 

Shake  the   Reef.  —  Reason   Dethroned.  —  The   Face  of  the  Water.  — 

A  Bewitching  Scene.  —  Romance  and  Beauty 112 

CHAPTER  X. 

Putting  on  Airs.  —  Taken  down  a  bit.  —  Learn  it  as  it  is.  —  The  River 

Rising 122 

CHAPTER  XL 

In  the  Tract  Business.  —  Effects  of  the  Rise. —  Plantations  gone. — A 
Measureless  Sea.  —  A  Somnambulist  Pilot.  —  Supernatural  Piloting. 
—  Nobody  there. —  All  Saved    - 132 

CHAPTER   XII. 

Low   Water.  —  Yawl   sounding.  —  Buoys   and   Lanterns.  —  Cubs   and 

Soundings.  —  The  Boat  Sunk.  —  Seeking  the  Wrecked 143 

CHAPTER   XIII. 

A  Pilot's  Memory.  —  Wages  soaring.  —  A  Universal  Grasp.  —  Skill  and 
Nerve.  —  Testing  a  "  Cub."  —  "Back  her  for  Life."  —  A  Good  Les- 
son  152 

CHAPTER   XIV. 

Pilots   and  Captains.  —  High-priced  Pilots.  —  Pilots    in  Demand.  —  A 

Whistler.  —  A  cheap  Trade.  —  Two-liundred-and-fif ty-dollar  Speed    .     166 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  XV. 


New  Pilots  undermining  the  Pilots'  Association.  —  Crutches  and  Wages. 
—  Putting  on  Airs.  —  The  Captains  Weaken.  —  The  Association 
Laughs.  —  The  Secret  Sign.  —  An  Admirable  System. — Rough  on 
Outsiders.  —  A  Tight  Monopoly.  —  No  Loophole.  —  The  Railroads 
and  the  War 176 


CHAPTER  XVI. 

All  Aboard.  —  A  Glorious  Start.  —  Loaded  to  Win.  —  Bands  and  Bugles. 

— '  Boats  and  Boats.  —  Racers  and  Racing    . 193 

CHAPTER  XVII. 

Cut-offs.  —  Ditching  and  Shooting.  —  Mississippi  Changes.  —  A  Wild 
Night. —  Swearing  and  Guessing.  —  Stephen  in  Debt.  —  He  Confuses 
his  Creditors.  —  He  makes  a  New  Deal.  —  Will  Pay  them  Alpha- 
betically   205 

CHAPTER  XVIII. 

Sharp  Schooling.  —  Shadows.  —  I  am  Inspected.  — Where  did  you  get 
them  Shoes  ?  —  Pull  her  Down.  —  I  want  to  kill  Brown.  —  I  try  to  run 
her.  —  I  am  Complimented 217 

CHAPTER  XIX. 

A  Question  of  Veracity.  — A  Little  Unpleasantness.  —  I  have  an  Audi- 
ence with  the  Captain. —  Mr.  Brown  Retires 227 

CHAPTER  XX. 

I  become  a  Passenger.  —  We  hear  the  News.  — A  Thunderous  Crash.  — 
They  Stand  to  their  Posts.  —  In  the  Blazing  Sun.  —  A  Grewsome 
Spectacle. — His  Hour  has  Struck 236 

.    CHAPTER  XXI. 
I  get  my  License.  —  The  War  Begins.  —  I  become  a  Jack-of-all-trades    .     246 

CHAPTER  XXII. 

I  try  the  Alias  Business.  — Region  of  Goatees.  — Boots  begin  to  Appear. — 
The  River  Man  is  Missing.  —  The  Young  Man  is  Discouraged.  — 
Specimen  Water.  —  A  Fine  Quality  of  Smoke.  —  A  Supreme  Mistake. 
—  We  Inspect  the  Town.  —  Desolation  Way-traffic.  —  A  Wood-yard  .    247 


10  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  XXIII. 

Old  French  Settlements.  —  We  start  for  Memphis.  —  Young  Ladies  and 

Russia-leather  Bags 258 

CHAPTER   XXIV. 

I  receive  some  Information.  —  Alligator  Boats. — Alligator  Talk.  —  She 

was  a  Rattler  to  go.  —  I  am  Found  Out .'    .     .    .     264 

CHAPTER   XXV. 
The  Devil's  Oven  and  Table. — A  Bombshell  falls.  —  No  Whitewash. — 
Thirty  Years  on  the  River.  —  Mississippi  Uniforms.  —  Accidents  and 
Casualties.  — Two  hundred  Wrecks.  — A  Loss  to  Literature.  —  Sunday- 
Schools  and  Brick  Masons 273 

CHAPTER  XXVI. 
War  Talk.  —  I  Tilt  over  Backwards.  —  Fifteen  Shot-holes.  —  A  Plain 
Story.  —  Wars  and  Feuds.  —  Darnell  ve7-sus  Watson.  —  A  Gang  and 
a  Woodpile.  — Western  Grammar.  —  River  Changes.  —  New  Madrid. 

—  Floods  and  Falls 281 

CHAPTER  XXVII. 
Tourists  and  their  Note-hooks.  —  Captain  Hall.  —  Mrs.  Trollope's  Emo- 
tions. —  Hon.    Charles    Augustus    Murray's  Sentiment.  —  Captain 
Marryat's  Sensations.  —  Alexander  Mackay's  Feelings.  —  Mr.  Park- 
man  Reports 292 

CHAPTER  XXVIII. 
Swinging  down  the  River.  —  Named  for  Me.  —  Plum  Point  again. — 
Lights  and  Snag  Boats.  — Infinite  Changes.  —  A  Lawless  River.  — 
Changes  and  Jetties.  —  Uncle  Mumford  Testifies.  —  Pegging  the 
River.  —  What  the  Government  does.  —  The  Commission  Men  and 
Theories.     "  Had  them  Bad."  —  Jews  and  Prices 298 

CHAPTER   XXIX. 
Murel's  Gang.  —  A  Consummate  Villain.  —  Getting  Rid  of  Witnesses.  — 
Stewart  turns  Traitor.  —  I  Start  a  Rebellion.  —  I  get  a  New  Suit  of 
Clothes.  —  We  Cover  our  Tracks.  —  Pluck  and  Capacity.  —  A  Good 
Samaritan  City.  —  The  Old  and  the  New 311 

CHAPTER  XXX. 
A  Melancholy  Picture.  —  On  the  Move.  —  River  Gossip.  —  She  Went  By 
a-Sparklin'.  —  Amenities  of  Life.  —  A  World  of  Misinformation.  — 
Eloquence  of  Silence.  —  Striking  a  Snag.  —  Photographically  Exact. 

—  Plank  Side-walks 325 


CONTENTS.  11 


CHAPTER  XXXI. 

Mutinous  Language.  —  The  Dead-house.  —  Cast-iron  German  and  Flex- 
ible English.  —  A  Dying  Man's  Confession.  —  I  am  Bound  and 
Gagged.  —  I  get  Myself  Free.  —  I  Begin  my  Search.  —  The  Man  with 
one  Thumb.  —  Red  Paint  and  White  Paper.  —  He  Dropped  on  his 
Knees.  —  Fright  and  Gratitude.  —  I  Fled  through  the  Woods. — A 
Grisly  Spectacle.  —  Shout,  Man,  Shout.  —  A  look  of  Surprise  and  Tri- 
umph. —  The  Muffled  Gurgle  of  a  Mocking  Laugh.  —  How  strangely 
'firings  happen.  —  The  Hidden  Money 337 


CHAPTER   XXXII. 

Ritter's   Narrative.  —  A  Question   of   Money.  —  Napoleon. — Somebody 

is  Serious.  —  Where  the  Prettiest  Girl  used  to  Live 357 


CHAPTER   XXXIII. 

A  Question  of  Division.  —  A  Place  where  there  was  no  License.  —  The 
Calhoun  Land  Company.  —  A  Cotton-planter's  Estimate.  —  Halifax 
and  Watermelons.  —  Jewelled-up  Bar-keepers 364 

CHAPTER  XXXIV. 

An  Austere  Man.  —  A  Mosquito  Policy.  — Facts  dressed  in  Tights.  — A 

swelled  Left  Ear 372 

CHAPTER  XXXV. 

Signs  and  Scars.  —  Cannon-thunder  Rages. —  Cave-dwellers,  — A  Con- 
tinual Sunday.  —  A  ton  of  Iron  and  no  Glass.  —  The  Ardent  is  Saved. 

—  Mule  Meat  —  A  National  Cemetery.  —  A  Dog  and  a  Shell.  —  Rail- 
roads and  Wealth. —  Wharfage  Economy.  —  Vicksburg  versus  The 

"  Gold  Dust."  —  A  Narrative  in  Anticipation       375 

CHAPTER  XXXVI. 

The  Professor  Spins  a  Yarn.  —  An  Enthusiast  in  Cattle.  —  He  makes  a 
Proposition.  —  Loading  Beeves  at  Acapulco.  —  He  was  n't  Raised  to  it. 

—  He  is  Roped  In.  —  His  Dull  Eyes  Lit  Up.  —  Four  Aces,  you  Ass  !  — 

He  does  n't  Care  for  the  Gores 387 

CHAPTER  XXXVII. 

A  Terrible  Disaster.  —  The  "  Gold  Dust  "  explodes  her  Boilers.  —  The 

End  of  a  Good  Man 397 


12  CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  XXXVIII. 

Mr.  Dickens  has  a  Word.  —  Best  Dwellings  and  their  Furniture.  — Albums 
and  Music.  —  Pantelettes  and  Conch-shells.  —  Sugar-candy  Rabbits 
and  Photographs.  —  Horse-hair  Sofas  and  Snuffers.  —  Rag  Carpets 
and  Bridal  Chambers 399 

CHAPTER   XXXIX. 

Rowdies  and  Beauty.  —  Ice  as  Jewelry.  —  Ice  Manufacture.  —  More  Sta- 
tistics.—  Some  Drummers.  —  Oleomargarine  versus  Butter. — Olive 
Oil  versus  Cotton  Seed.  —  The  Answer  was  not  Caught.  —  A  Terrific 
Episode.  —  A  Sulphurous  Canopy.  —  The  Demons  of  War.  —  The 
Terrible  Gauntlet .408 

CHAPTER  XL. 

In  Flowers,  like  a  Bride. — A  White-washed  Castle.  —  A  Southern  Pros- 
pectus.—  Pretty  Pictures.  —  An  Alligator's  Meal 416 

CHAPTER  XLI. 

The  Approaches  to  New  Orleans.  —  A  Stirring  Street.  —  Sanitary  Im- 
provements. —  Journalistic  Achievements.  —  Cisterns  and  Wells  .     .     422 

CHAPTER  XLH. 

Beautiful  Grave-yards.  —  Chameleons  and  Panaceas.  —  Inhumation  and 

Infection.  —  Mortality  and  Epidemics.  —  The  Cost  of  Funerals      .     .    430 

CHAPTER  XLIII. 

I  meet  an  Acquaintance.  —  Coffins  and  Swell  Houses.  —  Mrs.  O'Flaherty 
goes  One  Better.  —  Epidemics  and  Embamming.  —  Six  hundred  for  a 
Good  Case.  —  Joyful  High  Spirits 436 

CHAPTER  XLIV. 

French  and  Spanish  Parts  of  the  City.  —  Mr.  Cable  and  the  Ancient 
Quarter.  —  Cabbages  and  Bouquets.  —  Cows  and  Children.  —  The 
Shell  Road.  —  The  West  End.  —  A  Good  Square  Meal.  —  The  Pom- 
pano.  —  The  Broom-Brigade.  —  Historical  Painting.  —  Southern 
Speech.  —  Lagniappe 442 

CHAPTER   XLV. 

"  Wa w  "  Talk.  —  Cock-Fighting.  —  Too  Much  to  Bear.  —Fine  Writing. 

—  Mule  Racing 454 


CONTENTS.  13 


CHAPTER  XLVI. 
Mardi-Gras.  —  The  Mystic  Crewe.  —  Rex  and  Relics.  —  Sir  Walter  Scott. 

—  A  World  Set  Back.  —  Titles  and  Decorations.  —  A  Change      .     .    465 

CHAPTER  XL VII. 
Uncle  Remus.  —  The  Children  Disappointed.  —  We  Read  Aloud.  —  Mr. 
Cable  and  Jean  ah  Poquelin.  —  Involuntary  Trespass.  —  The  Gilded 
Age.  —  An  Impossible   Combination.  —  The  Owner  Materializes  — 
and  Protests 471 

CHAPTER  XLVIII. 
Tight  Curls  and  Springy  Steps.  —  Steam-plows.  —  "  No.  I."  Sugar.  —  A 
Frankenstein  Laugh.  —  Spiritual  Postage.  —  A  Place  where  there  are 
no  Butchers  or  Plumbers. — Idiotic  Spasms .    475 

CHAPTER  XLIX. 
Pilot-Farmers.  — Working  on  Shares.  —  Consequences.  —  Men  who  Stick 

to  their  Posts.  —  He  saw  what  he  would  do.  —  A  Day  after  the  Fair  .    486 

CHAPTER   L. 
A  Patriarch.  —  Leaves  from  a  Diary.  —  A  Tongue-stopper.  —  The  An- 
cient Mariner.  —  Pilloried  in  Print.  —  Petrified  Truth 493 

CHAPTER  LI. 
A  Fresh  "  Cub  "  at  the  Wheel.  —  A  "Valley  Storm.  —  Some  Remarks  on 
Construction.  —  Sock  and   Buskin.  —  The  Man  who  never  played 
Hamlet.  —  I  got  Thirsty.  —  Sunday  Statistics 500 

CHAPTER   LII. 
I  Collar  an  Idea.  —  A  Graduate  of  Harvard.  —  A  Penitent  Thief.  —  His 
Story  in  the  Pulpit.  —  Something  Symmetrical.  —  A  Literary  Artist. 

—  A  Model  Epistle.  —  Pumps  again  Working.  —  The  "  Nub  "  of  the 
Note 509 

CHAPTER  LIII. 
A  Masterly  Retreat.  —  A  Town  at  Rest.  —  Boyhood's  Pranks.  —  Friends 
of  my  Youth.  —  The  Refuge  for  Imbeciles. — I  am  Presented  with 
my  Measure 523 

CHAPTER   LIV. 
A  Special  Judgment.  —  Celestial  Interest.  —  A  Night  of  Agony.  —  An- 
other Bad  Attack.  —  I  become  Convalescent. — I  address  a  Sunday- 
school.  —  A  Model  Boy 530 


14  CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER   LV. 
A  second  Generation.  —  A  hundred  thousand  Tons  of  Saddles.  —  A  Dark 
and  Dreadful  Secret.  —  A  Large  Family.  —  A  Golden-haired  Darling. 

—  The  Mysterious  Cross.  —  My  Idol  is  Broken.  —  A  Bad  Season  of 
Chills  and  Fever.  —  An  Interesting  Cave 540 

CHAPTER   LVI. 
Perverted  History. —  A  Guilty  Conscience.  —  A  Supposititious  Case. —  A 

Habit  to  be  Cultivated.  —  I  Drop  my  Burden.  —  Difference  in  Time  .     548 

CHAPTER  LVII. 
A  Model  Town.  —  A  Town  that  Comes  up  to  Blow  in  the  Summer.  —  The 
Scare-crow  Dean.  —  Spouting  Smoke  and  Flame.  —  An  Atmosphere 
that  tastes  good.  —  The  Sunset  Land 555 

CHAPTER   LVIII. 
An  Independent  Race.  —  Twenty-four-hour  Towns.  —  Enchanting  Sce- 
nery. —  The  Home  of  the  Plow.  —  Black  Hawk.  —  Fluctuating  Se- 
curities. —  A  Contrast.  —  Electric  Lights 564 

CHAPTER  LIX. 

Indian  Traditions  and  Rattlesnakes.  —  A  Three-ton  Word.  —  Chimney 
Rock.  — The  Panorama  Man.  — A  Good  Jump.  —  The  Undying  Head. 

—  Peboan  and  Seegwun 573 

CHAPTER  LX. 
The  Head  of  Navigation.  —  From  Roses  to  Snow.  —  Climatic  Vaccina- 
tion. —  A  Long  Ride.  —  Bones  of  Poverty.  —  The  Pioneer  of  Civiliza- 
tion.—  Jug  of  Empire.  —  Siamese  Twins.  —  The  Sugar-bush. — He 
Wins  his  Bride.  —  The  Mystery  about  the  Blanket.  —  A  City  that  is 
always  a  Novelty.  —  Home  again 582 


APPENDIX. 

A 505 

B 605 

C 608 

D 612 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS. 


1.  The  "  Baton  Rouge  " Frontispiece 

2.  Mississippi  Steamboat  op  Fifty  Years  Ago Titlepage 

3.  View  on  the  River 21 

4.  A  High-water  Sketch 22 

5.  La  Salle  Canoeing 24 

6.  De  Soto  Sees  It 25 

7.  Classifying  their  Offspring 27 

8.  Burial  of  De  Soto 28 

9.  Canadian  Indians 29 

10.  Crossing  the  Lakes 32 

11.  Anchored  in  the  Stream 33 

12.  Hospitably  Received 34 

13.  La  Salle  on  the  Ice 38 

14.  Consecrating  the  Robbery 37 

15.  The  Temple  Wall 38 

16.  Early  Navigation 40 

17.  A  Lumber  Rapt 42 

18.  I  Swum  along  the  Raft 43 

19.  He  Jumped  up  in  the  Air 45 

20.  Went  around  in  a  Circle 46 

21.  He  Knocked  them  Sprawling - 48 

22.  »An  Old-fashioned  Breakdown 49 

23.  The  Mysterious  Barrel , 51 

24.  Soon  there  was  a  Regular  Storm 53 

25.  The  Lightning  Killed  Two  Men 55 

26.  Grabbed  the  Little  Child .56 

27.  Ed  got  up  Mad .57 

28.  Who  are  you  ?..... 58 

29.  Charles  William  Allbright,  Sir .60 

30.  Overboard .61 

31.  Our  Permanent  Ambition .62 

32.  Water-Street  Clerks .63 

33.  All  Go  Hurrying  to  the  Wharf 64 

34.  The  Town  Drunkard  Asleep  Once  More 66 

35.  A  Shining  Hero 68 

36.  Day  Dreams 69 

37.  Bored  with  Travelling 71 

38.  Tell  Me  where  it  is  —  I  'll  fetch  it 73 

39.  Sublime  in  Profanity 75 

40.  His  Tears  Dripped  upon  the  Lantern       77 

41.  The  Chalk  Pipe  . 78 

42.  He  Easily  Borrowed  Six  Dollars 80 


16  LIST   OF  ILLUSTRATIONS. 


43.  Besieging  the  Pilot 81 

44.  This  is  Nine-mile  Point 82 

45.  Come  !  turn  out 83 

46.  A  Minute  Later ....         84 

47.  You  're  a  Smart  One   ...         86 

48.  Get  a  Memorandum  Book    ...         87 

49.  A  Sumptuous  Temple 89 

50.  River  Inspectors 92 

51.  A  Tangled  Knot 94 

52.  Insensibly  they  Drew  Together 96 

53.  Stand  By,  now  ! 98 

54.  Over  She  Goes  ! 99 

55.  Shoulder  to  Shoulder 101 

56.  Loading  and  Firing 102 

57.  Changing  Watch 105 

58.  All  Well  but  Me 107 

59.  Learning  the  River 109 

60.  Learn  Me  or  Kill  Me Ill 

61.  That  's  a  Reef 113 

62.  Set  Her  Back 114 

63.  Mr.  Blxby  Stepped  into  View 117 

64.  I  Stood  Like  One  Bewitched 120 

65.  Sunset  Views 121 

66.  Wearing  a  Toothpick       123 

67.  Do  You  see  that  Stump  ? 124 

68.  The  Orator  of  the  Scow 127 

69.  Drifting  Logs 129 

70.  Gambling  down  Below 131 

71.  Tract  Distributing 133 

72.  Yellow-faced  Miserable* 135 

73.  On  a  Shoreless  Sea 137 

74.  The  Phantom  Assumed  the  Wheel 139 

75.  Nobody  there 140 

76.  Dark  Piloting 142 

77.  Sounding 143 

78.  Oh,  how  Awful! •  147 

79.  Hauled  Aboard 150 

80.  On  Soundings 151 

81.  A  City  Street 153 

82.  Let  a  Leadsman  cry,  "  Half  Twain  '.  " 155 

83.  On,  I  Knew  Him  ! 156 

84.  So  Full  of  Laugh  !       157 

85.  Scared  to  Death 160 

86.  Where  is  Mr.  Bixby  ? 161 

87.  If  You  Love  Me,  Back  Her! 164 

88.  Back  her,  back  her  ! 165 

89.  Very  Brief  Authority 167 

90.  Treated  with  Marked  Deference 168 

91.  You  Take  My  Boat 170 

92.  No  Foolin'! 171 

93.  Went  to  Whistling 173 

94.  Burst  into  a  Fury 177 

95.  Resurrected  Pilots 179 

96.  The  Captain  Stormed 182 

97.  The  Sign  of  Membership 183 

98.  Posting  His  Report 1S6 


LIST   OF   ILLUSTRATIONS.  17 

99.    Added  to  the  Fold 188 

100.  A  Justifiable  Advance 190 

101.  Tow-boat  Supremacy 192 

102.  Steamboat  Time 195 

103.  Drowsy  Engineers 197 

104.  Brass  Bands  Bray 199 

105.  (The  Parting  Chorus 201 

106.  Race  op  the  Lee  and  the  Natchez ; 204 

107.  Dangerous  Ditching 206 

108.  A  Scientist 207 

109.  Deluged  and  Careened 209 

110.  The  Spectre  Steamer 211 

111.  My,  What  a  Race  1  'ye  Had  !     .         213 

112.  Beaming  Benignantly 215 

113.  The  Debt-Payer 216 

114.  Pilot  Brown 218 

115.  Are  You  Horace  Bigsby's  Cub  ? 21!) 

116.  Hold  up  Your  Foot 220 

117.  Take  That  Ice-Pitcher 221 

118.  Poll  Her  Down 222 

119.  I  Killed  Brown  Every  Night 224 

120.  Hurled  Me  Across  the  House 225 

121.  Killing  Brown 220 

122.  I  Hit  Brown  a  Good  Honest  Blow 229 

123.  The  Racket  Had  brought  Everybody  to  the  Deck 231 

124.  So  You  have  been  Fighting  ! 232 

125.  An  Emancipated  Slave 234 

126.  Music  and  Games 235 

127.  Henry  and  I  sat  Chatting 237 

128.  Emptying  the  Wood-flat 238 

129.  The  Explosion  —  A  Startled  Barber 239 

130.  Ealer  Saves  His  Flute 240 

131.  The  Fire  Drove  the  Axemen  Away 242 

132.  The  Hospital  Ward 244 

133.  The  Land  of  full  Goatees 248 

134.  Station  Loafers 249 

135.  Under  an  Alias 250 

136.  Do  You  Drink  this  Slush? 251 

137.  Sound-asleep  Steamboats 254 

138.  Dead  past  Resurrection 255 

139.  The  Wood-yard  Man 257 

140.  Waiting  for  a  Trip 259 

141.  The  Electric  Light 260 

142.  A  Landing 261 

143.  A  Close  Inspection     . 262 

144.  Empty  Wharves  :  Wharf  Hands  "  Full  " 263 

145.  Showing  the  Bells 265 

146.  An  Alligator  Boat 266 

147.  Alligator  Pilots    ...         267 

148.  The  Sacred  Bird 269 

149.  Counting  the  Vote 270 

150.  Here,  You  Take  Her 272 

151.  Grand  Tower 273 

152.  A  Dairy  Farm 275 

153.  Threw  the  Preacher  Overboard 277 

154.  Illinois  Ground 279 

2 


18  LIST   OF   ILLUSTRATIONS. 


155.  His  Maiden  Battle 281 

156.  Mighty  Warm  Times 282 

157.  Where  did  Yon  See  that  Fight  ? 284 

158.  Darnell  vs.  Watson 285 

159.  They  Kept  on  Shooting 287 

160.  Island  No.  10 289 

161.  Flood  on  the  River 290 

162.  Inundation  Scenes 291 

163.  A  Dismal  Witness 293 

164.  The  Lonely  River .297 

165.  The  Steamer  "  Mark  Twain  " 298 

166.  A  Government  Lamp 299 

167.  Snags 300 

168.  Running  in  a  Fog 301 

169.  Uncle  Mumford 305 

170.  Talking  over  the  Situation 308 

171.  The  Tow 310 

172.  A  Soul-moving  Villain 312 

173.  Selling  the  Negro 313 

174.  Concealed  in  the  Brake 314 

175.  A  Man  came  in  Sight 316 

176.  I  Shot  Him  through  the  Head 317 

177.  Another  Victim 319 

178.  Pleasantly  Situated 320 

179.  Memphis  —  A  Landing  Stage 322 

180.  Natives  at  Dinner 324 

181.  A  Light-keeper       325 

182.  Negro  Travellers 327 

183.  Any  Boat  gone  up? * 328 

184.  A  World  of  Misinformation 330 

185.  A  Fatal  Blow 332 

186.  Elaborate  Style 333 

187.  Napoleon  in  1871 337 

188.  The  Man's  Eyes  opened  slowly 340 

189.  They  rummaged  the  Cabin 342 

190.  On  the  Right  Track 345 

191.  Thumb-Prints 346 

192.  He  dropped  on  his  Knees 347 

193.  The  Tragedy 349 

194.  In  the  Morgue 350 

195.  I  sat  down  by  him 353 

196.  The  Shadow  of  Doom 356 

197.  We  began  to  cool  off 358 

198.  Ain't  that  so,  Thompson? 359 

199.  He  is  Happy  where  He  is       360 

200.  Warmed  up  into  a  Quarrel 361 

201.  Napoleon  as  it  is 363 

202.  Caving  Banks 365 

203.  The  Commission  Dealer 367 

204.  The  Israelite 368 

205.  The  Barkeeper 369 

206.  A  Plain  Gill 370 

207.  A  "  Watirmcluon  " 371 

208.  Mosquitoes 372 

209.  A  Bad  Ear 373 

210.  Fanning  Himself 374 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS.  19 

211.  Vicksburg 375 

212.  Thb  River  was  Undisturbed 377 

213.  The  Cave  Dwellers 378 

214.  Bringing  the  Children 380 

215.  Wait  and  Make  Certain 381 

216.  Mule  Meat 383 

217.  Native  Wild-woods 384 

218.  My  Promenade 388 

219.  A  Short  Stout  Bag 390 

220.  The  Door  was  A-crack 392 

221.  Five  Hundred  Better 393 

222.  Been  Laying  for  you  Duffers 395 

223.  A  Winning  Hand 396 

224.  An  Explosion 398 

225.  An  Interior 401 

226.  Cleansing  Themselves 405 

227.  Soap  and  Brushes 407 

228.  Natchez 409 

229.  Drummers 411 

230.  Smell  Them,  Taste  Them 413 

231.  On-  and  Oleo 415 

232.  Columbia  Female  Institute 417 

233.  The  Graceful  Palmetto 420 

234.  High  Water 422 

235.  The  Wharves 423 

236.  Canal  Street 425 

237.  West  End 428 

238.  The  Cemetery 430 

239.  Immortelles  . 431 

240.  Chameleons 432 

241.  Relics 434 

242.  Funeral  Wreaths 435 

243.  He  Chuckled 436 

244.  Why,  Just  Look  at  it  ! 437 

245.  Ambition 439 

246.  An  Explanation 440 

247.  The  St.  Charles  Hotel 443 

248.  The  Shell  Road 445 

249.  Spanish  Fort 446 

250.  The  Broom  Brigade 447 

251.  "  Whah  You  was  ?  " 449 

252.  For  Lagniappe 45i 

253.  Lagniappe 453 

254.  "  Waw  "  Talk 455 

255.  Cock-pit 457 

256.  Guests 460 

257.  Absence  of  Harmony 462 

258.  Collision 463 

259.  Mardi-Gras  .     .    .  » 466 

260.  Chivalry 468 

261.  Uncle  Remus 472 

262.  We  Read  Aloud 473 

263.  A  River  Landing 474 

264.  The  Captain 477 

265.  Pilot  Town 480 

266.  Smoke  and  Gosstp 48] 


20  LIST   OF  ILLUSTRATIONS. 

267.  Thb  Interview 484 

268.  Boat-travellers 485 

269.  Over  the  Breastboard 488 

270.  Thornborgh's  Cub 490 

271.  He  Cldng  to  a  Cotton-bale 491 

272.  A  Chill  Fell  There 495 

273.  Sellers's  Monument 498 

274.  The  Night  Approach 499 

275.  I  am  Anxious  About  the  Time 501 

276.  Stage-struck , 504 

277.  Look  here,  Have  You  got  that  Drink  yet? 506 

278.  Tools  op  the  Trade 508 

279.  Williams  Plies  His  Trade 511 

280.  He  Pulled  some  Leather 512 

281.  The  Crisis 513 

282.  Mission  Work 516 

283.  Williams 519 

284.  The  Days  of  Long  Ago 525 

285.  A  Practical  Joke 528 

286.  Fools  for  St.  Louis 529 

287.  I  sat  up  in  Bed  Quaking 531 

288.  All  Right,  Dutchy  —  Go  Ahead 534 

289.  We  all  Flew  Home 536 

290.  Random  Rubbish 539 

291.  The  Consecrated  Knife 543 

292.  A  Cheap  and  Pitiful  Ruin 545 

293.  A  Bad  Case  op  Shakes 546 

294.  Shaken  Down 547 

295.  I  Tamper  with  My  Conscience 550 

296.  My  Burden  is  Lifted 553 

297.  Bad  Dreams 554 

298.  Henry  Clay  Dean 557 

399.    The  House  Began  to  Break  into  Applause 559 

300.  A  Former  Resident 562 

301.  An  Independent  Race 564 

302.  The  Man  With  a  Trade-mark 567 

303.  Majestic  Bluffs 569 

304.  "  Nuth'n,"  says  Smith 570 

305.  Steamer  at  Night 572 

306.  Queen's  Bluff 573 

307.  Chimney  Rock 575 

308.  The  Maiden's  Rock 576 

309.  The  Lecturer 578 

310.  St.  Paul 582 

311.  An  Early  Postmaster 585 

312.  The  First  Arrival 587 

SiB.    Minneapolis  and  the  Falls  of  St.  Anthony 588 

314.  The  Mixture 591 

315.  An  Arkansas  River  Post  Office «. 593 

316.  Indian  Ornaments 624 


LIFE  ON  THE  MISSISSIPPI. 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE  EIVERAND  ITS   HISTORY. 

THE  Mississippi  is  well  worth  reading  about.  It  is  not  a 
commonplace  river,  but  on  the  contrary  is  in  all  ways 
remarkable.  Considering  the  Missouri  its  main  branch,  it  is 
the  longest  river  in  the  world  —  four  thousand  three  hundred 


miles.  It  seems  safe  to  say 
that  it  is  also  the  crookedest  river  in 
the  world,  since  in  one  part  of  its  jour- 
ney it  uses  up  one  thousand  three  hun- 
dred miles  to  cover  the  same  ground  that  the 
crow  would  fly  over  in  six  hundred  and  seventy-five.  It  dis- 
charges three  times  as  much  water  as  the  St.  Lawrence, 
twenty-five  times  as  much  as  the  Rhine,  and  three  hundred 


9-7 


A  VERY   WET   RIVER. 


and  thirty-eight  times  as  much  as  the  Thames.  No  other 
river  has  so  vast  a  drainage-basin :  it  draws  its  water  supply 
from  twenty-eight  States  and  Territories  ;  from  Delaware,  on 
the  Atlantic  seaboard,  and  from  all  the  country  between  that 
and  Idaho  on  the  Pacific  slope  —  a  spread  of  forty-five 
degrees  of  longitude.  The  Mississippi  receives  and  carries 
to  the  Gulf  water  from  fifty-four  subordinate  rivers  that  are 
navigable  by  steamboats,  and  from  some  hundreds  that 
are  navigable  by  flats  and  keels.  The  area  of  its  drainage- 
basin  is  as  great  as  the  combined  areas  of  England,  Wales, 
Scotland,  Ireland,  France,  Spain,  Portugal,  Germany,  Austria, 
Italy,  and  Turkey  ;  and  almost  all  this  wide  region  is  fertile ; 
the  Mississippi  valley,  proper,  is  exceptionally  so. 


w^^^^-ly^ij 


It  is  a  remarkable 
river  in  this :  that  in- 
stead of  widening  to- 
ward its  mouth,  it  grows 

narrower ;  grows  narrower  and  deeper.  From  the  junction 
of  the  Ohio  to  a  point  half  way  down  to  the  sea,  the  width 
averages  a  mile  in  high  water :  thence  to  the  sea  the  width 
steadily  diminishes,  until,  at  the  "  Passes,"  above  the  mouth, 


MUCH    MUD.  23 

it  is  but  little  over  half  a  mile.  At  the  junction  of  the  Ohio 
the  Mississippi's  depth  is  eighty-seven  feet ;  the  depth 
increases  gradually,  reaching  one  hundred  and  twenty- 
nine  just  above  the  mouth. 

The  difference  in  rise  and  fall  is  also  remarkable  —  not  in 
the  upper,  but  in  the  lower  river.  The  rise  is  tolerably 
uniform  down  to  Natchez  (three  hundred  and  sixty  miles 
above  the  mouth)  —  about  fifty  feet.  But  at  Bayou  La 
Fourche  the  river  rises  only  twenty-four  feet ;  at  New  Orleans 
only  fifteen,  and  just  above  the  mouth  only  two  and  one 
half. 

An  article  in  the  New  Orleans  "  Times-Democrat,"  based 
upon  reports  of  able  engineers,  states  that  the  river  annually 
empties  four  hundred  and  six  million  tons  of  mud  into  the 
Gulf  of  Mexico  —  which  brings  to  mind  Captain  Marry  at' s 
rude  name  for  the  Mississippi  —  "  the  Great  Sewer."  This 
mud,  solidified,  would  make  a  mass  a  mile  square  and  two 
hundred  and  forty-one  feet  high. 

The  mud  deposit  gradually  extends  the  land  —  but  only 
gradually  ;  it  has  extended  it  not  quite  a  third  of  a  mile  in 
the  two  hundred  years  which  have  elapsed  since  the  river 
took  its  place  in  history.  The  belief  of  the  scientific  people 
is,  that  the  mouth  used  to  be  at  Baton  Rouge,  where  the  hills 
cease,  and  that  the  two  hundred  miles  of  land  between  there 
and  the  Gulf  was  built  by  the  river.  This  gives  us  the 
age  of  that  piece  of  country,  without  any  trouble  at  all  — 
one  hundred  and  twenty  thousand  years.  Yet  it  is  much 
the  youthfulest  batch  of  country  that  lies  around  there 
anywhere. 

The  Mississippi  is  remarkable  in  still  another  way  —  its 
disposition  to  make  prodigious  jumps  by  cutting  through 
narrow  necks  of  land,  and  thus  straightening  and  shortening 
itself.  More  than  once  it  has  shortened  itself  thirty  miles 
at  a  single  jump  !  These  cut-offs  have  had  curious  effects  : 
they  have  thrown  several  river  towns  out  into  the  rural 
districts,  and  built  up  sand  bars  and  forests  in  front  of  them. 


24 


CUT-OFFS. 


The  town  of  Delta  used  to  be  three  miles  below  Vicksburg : 
a  recent  cut-off  has  radically  changed  the  position,  and  Delta 
is  now  two  miles  above  Vicksburg. 

Both  of  these  river  towns  have  been  retired  to  the  country 
by  that  cut-off1.  A  cut-off  plays  havoc  with  boundary  lines 
and  jurisdictions  :  for  instance,  a  man  is  living  in  the  State 
of  Mississippi  to-day,  a  cut-off  occurs  to-night,  and  to-morrow 
the  man  finds  himself  and  his  land  over  on  the  other  side  of 
the  river,  within  the  boundaries  and  subject  to  the  laws 
of  the  State  of  Louisiana !  Such  a  thing,  happening  in  the 
upper  river  in  the  old  times,  could  have  transferred  a  slave 
from  Missouri  to  Illinois  and  made  a  free  man  of  him. 

The  Mississippi  does  not  alter  its  locality  by  cut-offs  alone  : 
it  is  always  changing  its  habitat  bodily  —  is  always  moving 


bodily  sidewise.    At  Hard  Times, 

La.,  the  river  is  two  miles  west  of  the  region  it  used  to 
occupy.  As  a  result,  the  original  site  of  that  settlement  is 
not  now  in  Louisiana  at  all,  but  on  the  other  side  of  the 


HISTORICAL  HISTORY. 


25 


river,  in  the  State  of  Mississippi.  Nearly  the  whole  of  that 
one  thousand  three  hundred  miles  of  old  Mississippi  River 
which  La  Salle  floated  down  in  his  canoes,  two  hundred  years 
ago,  is  good  solid  dry  ground  now.  The  river  lies  to  the 
right  of  it,  in  places,  and  to  the  left  of  it  in  other  places. 

Although  the  Mississippi's  mud  builds*  land  but  slowly, 
down  at  the  mouth,  where  the  Gulf's  billows  interfere  with 
its  work,  it  builds  fast  enough  in  better  protected  regions 
higher  up :  for  instance,  Prophet's  Island  contained  one 
thousand  five  hundred  acres  of  land  thirty  years  ago  ;  since 
then  the  river  has  added  seven  hundred  acres  to  it. 

But  enough  of  these  examples  of  the  mighty  stream's 
eccentricities  for  the  present  —  I  will  give  a  few  more  of 
them  further  along  in  the  book. 

Let  us  drop  the  Mississippi's  physical  history,  and  say 
a  word  about  its  historical  history  —  so  to  speak.     We  can 

glance  briefly  at  its 
slumbrous  first 
epoch  in  a  couple 
of  short  chapters ; 
at  its  second  and 
wider-awake    epoch 


in  a  couple   more ;  at  its 

flushest  and  widest-awake  epoch  in  a  good  many  succeed- 


26  DATES   AND  DATA. 

ing  chapters ;  and  then  talk  about  its  comparatively 
tranquil  present  epoch  in  what  shall  be  left  of  the 
book. 

The  world  and  the  books  are  so  accustomed  to  use,  and 
over-use,  the  word  "new"  in  connection  with  our  country, 
that  we  early  get  Tmd  permanently  retain  the  impression  that 
there  is  nothing  old  about  it.  We  do  of  course  know  that 
there  are  several  comparatively  old  dates  in  American  his- 
tory, but  the  mere  figures  convey  to  our  minds  no  just 
idea,  no  distinct  realization,  of  the  stretch  of  time  which 
they  represent.  To  say  that  De  Soto,  the  first  white  man 
who  ever  saw  the  Mississippi  River,  saw  it  in  1542,  is  a 
remark  which  states  a  fact  without  interpreting  it :  it  is 
something  like  giving  the  dimensions  of  a  sunset  by  astro- 
nomical measurements,  and  cataloguing  the  colors  by  their 
scientific  names ;  —  as  a  result,  you  get  the  bald  fact  of  the 
sunset,  but  you  don't  see  the  sunset.  It  would  have  been 
better  to  paint  a  picture  of  it. 

The  date  1542,  standing  by  itself,  means  little  or  nothing 
to  us  ;  but  when  one  groups  a  few  neighboring  historical 
dates  and  facts  around  it,  he  adds  perspective  and  color, 
and  then  realizes  that  this  is  one  of  the  American  dates 
which  is  quite  respectable  for  age. 

For  instance,  when  the  Mississippi  was  first  seen  by  a 
white  man,  less  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  had  elapsed 
since  Francis  I.'s  defeat  at  Pavia ;  the  death  of  Raphael ; 
the  death  of  Bayard,  sans  peur  et  sans  reproche ;  the  driving- 
out  of  the  Knights-Hospitallers  from  Rhodes  by  the  Turks ; 
and  the  placarding  of  the  Ninety-Five  Propositions,  —  the 
act  which  began  the  Reformation.  When  De  Soto  took  his 
glimpse  of  the  river,  Ignatius  Loyola  was  an  obscure 
name ;  the  order  of  the  Jesuits  was  not  yet  a  year  old  ; 
Michael  Angelo's  paint  was  not  yet  dry  on  the  Last  Judg- 
ment in  the  Sistine  Chapel ;  Mary  Queen  of  Scots  was  not 
yet  born,  but  would  be  before  the  year  closed.  Catherine 
de  Medici  was  a  child;  Elizabeth  of  England  was  not  yet 


LORDS   AND   LADIES. 


27 


In  her  teens  ;  Calvin,  Benvenuto  Cellini,  and  the  Emperor 
Charles  V.  were  at  the  top  of  their  fame,  and  each  was 
manufacturing  history  after  his  own  peculiar  fashion ; 
Margaret  of  Navarre  was  writing  the  "  Heptameron "  and 
some  religious  books,  — the  first  survives,  the  others  are  for- 
gotten, wit  and  indelicacy  being  sometimes  better  literature- 
preservers  than  holiness ;  lax  court  morals  and  the  absurd 
chivalry  business  were  in  full  feather,  and  the  joust  and  the 
tournament  were  the  frequent  pastime  of  titled  fine  gentle- 
men who  could  fight  better  than  they  could  spell,  while 
religion  was  the  passion  of  their  ladies,  and  the  classifying 
their  offspring  into  children  of   full  rank  and  children  by 

brevet  their  pastime.  In 
fact,  all  around,  religion 
was  in  a  peculiarly  bloom- 
ing condition :  the 
_____  Council    of    Trent 

was  being 


/ 


CLASSIFYING   THEIR  OFFSPRING." 


called ;    the    Spanish    Inquisition  was 

roasting,  and  racking,  and  burning,  with    a 

free  hand;    elsewhere  on  the  continent   the    nations   were 

being  persuaded  to  holy  living  by  the  sword  and  fire  ;   in 

England,  Henry  VIII.  had  suppressed  the  monasteries,  burnt 

Fisher    and   another   bishop   or  two,  and   was   getting  his 


28 


DEATH  OF  DE  SOTO. 


English  reformation  and  his  harem  effectively  started. 
When  De  Soto  stood  on  the  banks  of  the  Mississippi,  it 
was  still  two  years  before  Luther's  death ;  eleven  years 
before  the  burning  of  Servetus ;  thirty  years  before  the 
St.  Bartholomew  slaughter ;  Rabelais  was  not  yet  published ; 
"  Don  Quixote "  was  not  yet  written ;  Shakspeare  was  not 
yet  born ;  a  hundred  long  years  must  still  elapse  before 
Englishmen  would  hear  the  name  of  Oliver  Cromwell. 

Unquestionably   the    discovery    of    the    Mississippi   is   a 
datable  fact  which  considerably  mellows  and  modifies  the 


BURIAL   OF   DE    SOTO. 


shiny  newness  of  our  country,  and  gives  her  a  most  respect- 
able outside-aspect  of  rustiness  and  antiquity. 

De  Soto  merely  glimpsed  the  river,  then  died  and  was 
buried  in  it  by  his  priests  and  soldiers.  One  would  expect 
the  priests  and  the  soldiers  to  multiply  the  river's  dimensions 
by  ten — the  Spanish  custom  of  the  day — and  thus  move 
other  adventurers  to  go  at  once  and  explore  it.  On  the  con- 
trary, their  narratives  when   they  reached  home,   did  not 


THE   SECOND   VISITOR. 


29 


excite  that  amount  of  curiosity.  The  Mississippi  was  left 
unvisited  by  whites  during  a  term  of  years  which  seems 
incredible  in  our  energetic  days.  One  may  "  sense "  the 
interval  to  his  mind,  after  a  fashion,  by  dividing  it  up  in 
this  way :  After  De  Soto  glimpsed  the  river,  a  fraction  short 
of  a  quarter  of  a  century  elapsed,  and  then  Shakspeare  was 
born ;  lived  a  trifle  more  than  half  a  century,  then  died  ; 
and  when  he  had  been  in  his  grave  considerably  more  than 
half  a  century,  the  second  white  man  saw  the  Mississippi. 
In  our  day  we  don't  allow  a  hundred  and  thirty  years  to 


CANADIAN   INDIANS. 


elapse  between  glimpses  of  a  marvel.  If  somebody  should 
discover  a  creek  in  the  county  next  to  the  one  that  the  North 
Pole  is  in,  Europe  and  America  would  start  fifteen  costly 
#expeditions  thither :  one  to  explore  the  creek,  and  the  other 
fourteen  to  hunt  for  each  other. 

For  more  than  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  there  had  been 
white  settlements  on  our  Atlantic  coasts.  These  people 
were  in  intimate  communication  with  the  Indians  :  in  the 


30  A  LONG  SILENCE. 

south  the  Spaniards  were  robbing,  slaughtering,  enslaving 
and  converting  them ;  higher  up,  the  English  were  trading 
beads  and  blankets  to  them  for  a  consideration,  and  throw- 
ing in  civilization  and  whiskey,  "for  lagniappe  j"1  and  in 
Canada  the  French  were  schooling  them  in  a  rudimentary 
way,  missionarying  among  them,  and  drawing  whole  popu- 
lations of  them  at  a  time  to  Quebec,  and  later  to  Montreal, 
to  buy  furs  of  them.  Necessarily,  then,  these  various  clus- 
ters of  whites  must  have  heard  of  the  great  river  of  the  far 
west ;  and  indeed,  they  did  hear  of  it  vaguely,  —  so  vaguely 
and  indefinitely,  that  its  course,  proportions,  and  locality 
were  hardly  even  guessable.  The  mere  mysteriousness  of 
the  matter  ought  to  have  fired  curiosity  and  compelled 
exploration ;  but  this  did  not  occur.  Apparently  nobody 
happened  to  want  such  a  river,  nobody  needed  it,  nobody 
was  curious  about  it ;  so,  for  a  century  and  a  half  the  Mis- 
sissippi remained  out  of  the  market  and  undisturbed.  When 
De  Soto  found  it,  he  was  not  hunting  for  a  river,  and  had 
no  present  occasion  for  one  ;  consequently  he  did  not  value 
it  or  even  take  any  particular  notice  of  it. 

But  at  last  La  Salle  the  Frenchman  conceived  the  idea  of 
seeking  out  that  river  and  exploring  it.  It  always  happens 
that  when  a  man  seizes  upon  a  neglected  and  important  idea,, 
people  inflamed  with  the  same  notion  crop  up  all  around. 
It  happened  so  in  this  instance. 

Naturally  the  question  suggests  itself,  Why  did  these  people 
want  the  river  now  when  nobody  had  wanted  it  in  the  five 
preceding  generations  ?  Apparently  it  was  because  at  this 
late  day  they  thought  they  had  discovered  a  way  to  make  it 
useful ;  for  it  had  come  to  be  believed  that  the  Mississippi 
emptied  into  the  Gulf  of  California,  and  therefore  afforded 
a  short  cut  from  Canada  to  China.  Previously  th'e  suppo- 
sition had  been  that  it  emptied  into  the  Atlantic,  or  Sea  of 
Virginia. 

1  See  page  450. 


CHAPTER   II. 

THE   RIVER  AND   ITS  EXPLORERS. 

LA  SALLE  himself  sued  for  certain  high  privileges,  and 
they  were  graciously  accorded  him  by  Louis  XIV.  of 
inflated  memory.  Chief  among  them  was  the  privilege  to 
explore,  far  and  wide,  and  build  forts,  and  stake  out  conti- 
nents, and  hand  the  same  over  to  the  king,  and  pay  the 
expenses  himself ;  receiving,  in  return,  some  little  advantages 
of  one  sort  or  another ;  among  them  the  monopoly  of  buffalo 
hides.  He  spent  several  years  and  about  all  of  his  money, 
in  making  perilous  and  painful  trips  between  Montreal  and  a 
fort  which  he  had  built  on  the  Illinois,  before  he  at  last  suc- 
ceeded in  getting  his  expedition  in  such  a  shape  that  he 
could  strike  for  the  Mississippi. 

And  meantime  other  parties  had  had  better  fortune.  In 
1673  Joliet  the  merchant,  and  Marquette  the  priest,  crossed 
the  country  and  reached  the  banks  of  the  Mississippi.  They 
went  by  way  of  the  Great  Lakes ;  and  from  Green  Bay,  in 
canoes,  by  way  of  Fox  River  and  the  Wisconsin.     Marquette 

i  had  solemnly  contracted,  on  the  feast  of  the  Immaculate 
Conception,  that  if  the  Virgin  would  permit  him  to  discover 
the  great  river,  he  would  name  it  Conception,  in  her  honor. 
He  kept  his  word.  In  that  day,  all  explorers  travelled  with 
an  outfit  of  priests.  Be  Soto  had  twenty-four  with  him.  La 
Salle  had  several,  also.     The  expeditions  were  often  out  of 

!  meat,  and  scant  of  clothes,  but  they  always  had  the  furniture 
and  other  requisites  for  the  mass;  they  were  always  pre- 
pared, as  one  of  the  quaint  chroniclers  of  the  time  phrased 
it,  to  "  explain  hell  to  the  salvages." 


32 


JOLIET   AND   MARQUETTE. 


On  the  17th  of  June,  1673,  the  canoes  of  Joliet  and  Mar- 
quette and  their  five  subordinates  reached  the  junction  of 
the  Wisconsin  with  the  Mississippi.  Mr.  Parkman  says : 
"Before  them  a  wide  and  rapid  current  coursed  athwart 
their  way,  by  the  foot  of  lofty  heights  wrapped  thick  in 
forests."  He  continues  :  "  Turning  southward,  they  paddled 
down  the  stream,  through  a  solitude  unrelieved  by  the  faint- 
est trace  of  man." 


CROSSING   THE   LAKES. 


A  big  cat-fish  collided  with  Marquette's  canoe,  and  startled 
him  ;  and  reasonably  enough,  for  he  had  been  warned  by  the 
Indians  that  he  was  on  a  foolhardy  journey,  and  even  a  fatal 
one,  for  the  river  contained  a  demon  "  whose  roar  could  be 
heard  at  a  great  distance,  and  who  would  engulf  them  in  the 
abyss  where  he  dwelt."  I  have  seen  a  Mississippi  cat-fish 
that  was  more  than  six  feet  long,  and  weighed  two  hundred 
and  fifty  pounds ;  and  if  Marquette's  fish  was  the  fellow  to 


AN  AWFUL   SOLITUDE. 


33 


that  one,  he  had  a  fair  right  to  think  the  river's  roaring 
demon  was  come. 

"  At  length  the  buffalo  began  to  appear,  grazing  in  herds 
on  the  great  prairies  which  then  bordered  the  river;  and 
Marquette  describes  the  fierce  and  stupid  look  of  the  old 
bulls  as  they  stared  at  the  intruders  through  the  tangled 
mane  which  nearly  blinded  them." 

The  voyagers  moved  cautiously :  "  Landed  at  night  and 
made  a  fire  to  cook  their  evening  meal ;  then  extinguished 


ANCHORED   IN   THE   STREAM. 


it,  embarked  again,  paddled  some  way  farther,  and  anchored 
in  the  stream,  keeping  a  man  on  the  watch  till  morning." 

They  did  this  day  after  day  and  night  after  night ;  and 
at  the  end  of  two  weeks  they  had  not  seen  a  human  being. 
The  river  was  an  awful  solitude,  then.  And  it  is  now,  over 
most  of  its  stretch. 

But  at  the  close  of  the  fortnight  they  one  day  came  upon 
the  footprints  of  men  in  the  mud  of  the  western  bank  —  a 
Robinson  Crusoe  experience  which  carries  an  electric  shiver 
with  it  yet,  when  one  stumbles  on  it  in  print.  They  had 
been  warned  that  the  river  Indians  were  as  ferocious  and 

3 


34 


INDIAN   HOSPITALITY. 


pitiless  as  the  river  demon,  and  destroyed  all  comers  without 
waiting  for  provocation  ;  but  no  matter,  Joliet  and  Marquette 
struck  into  the  country  to  hunt  up  the  proprietors  of  the 
tracks.      They  found  them,  by  and  by,  and  were 

hospitably  received  and  well  treated  —  if  to  *        be  re- 

ceived  by   an  Indian  chief  who  has   taken       lAi.lll   off  his 


"  HOSPITABLY   RECEIVED. 

last  rag  in  order  to  appear  at 
his  level  best  is  to  be  received  hos- 
pitably :  and  if  to  be  treated  abundantly 
to  fish,  porridge,  and  other  game,  including  dog,  and  have 
these  things  forked  into  one's  mouth  by  the  ungloved  fingers 
of  Indians  is  to  be  well  treated.  In  the  morning  the  chief 
and  six  hundred  of  his  tribesmen  escorted  the  Frenchmen 
to  the  river  and  bade  them  a  friendly  farewell. 

On  the  rocks  above  the  present  city  of  Alton  they  found 
some  rude  and  fantastic  Indian  paintings,  which  they 
describe.  A  short  distance  below  "  a  torrent  of  yellow  mud 
rushed  furiously  athwart  the  calm  blue  current  of  the  Mis- 


THE   VOYAGES   CONTINUED.  35 

sissippi,  boiling  and  surging  and  sweeping  in  its  course  logs, 
branches,  and  uprooted  trees."  This  was  the  mouth  of  the 
Missouri,  "  that  savage  river,"  which  "  descending  from  its 
mad  career  through  a  vast  unknown  of  barbarism,  poured  its 
turbid  floods  into  the  bosom  of  its  gentle  sister." 

By  and  by  they  passed  the  mouth  of  the  Ohio  ;  they  passed 
canebrakes ;  they  fought  mosquitoes  ;  they  floated  along,  day 
after  day,  through  the  deep  silence  and  loneliness  of  the  river, 
drowsing  in  the  scant  shade  of  makeshift  awnings,  and  broil- 
ing with  the  heat ;  they  encountered  and  exchanged  civilities 
with  another  party  of  Indians ;  and  at  last  they  reached  the 
mouth  of  the  Arkansas  (about  a  month  out  from  their  start- 
ing-point), where  a  tribe  of  war-whooping  savages  swarmed 
out  to  meet  and  murder  them ;  but  they  appealed  to  the  Vir- 
gin for  help  ;  so  in  place  of  a  fight  there  was  a  feast,  and 
plenty  of  pleasant  palaver  and  fol-de-rol. 

They  had  proved  to  their  satisfaction,  that  the  Missis- 
sippi did  not  empty  into  the  Gulf  of  California,  or  into  the 
Atlantic.  They  believed  it  emptied  into  the  Gulf  of  Mexico. 
They  turned  back,  now,  and  carried  their  great  news  to 
Canada. 

But  belief  is  not  proof.  It  was  reserved  for  La  Salle  to 
furnish  the  proof.  He  was  provokingly  delayed,  by  one  mis- 
fortune after  another,  but  at  last  got  his  expedition  under 
way  at  the  end  of  the  year  1681.  In  the  dead  of  winter  he 
and  Henri  de  Tonty,  son  of  Lorenzo  Tonty,  who  invented  the 
tontine,  his  lieutenant,  started  down  the  Illinois,  with  a  fol- 
lowing of  eighteen  Indians  brought  from  New  England,  and 
twenty-three  Frenchmen.  They  moved  in  procession  down 
the  surface  of  the  frozen  river,  on  foot,  and  dragging  their 
canoes  after  them  on  sledges. 

At  Peoria  Lake  they  struck  open  water,  and  paddled  thence 
to  the  Mississippi  and  turned  their  prows  southward.     They 
ploughed  through  the  fields  of  floating  ice,  past  the  mouth  of 
the  Missouri ;  past  the  mouth  of  the  Ohio,  by  and  by  ;  "  and, 
gliding  by  the  wastes  of  bordering  swamp,  landed  on  the  24th 


86 


THE  ARKANSAS   REACHED. 


of  February  near  the  Third  Chickasaw  Bluffs,"  where  they 
halted  and  built  Fort  Prudhomme. 

"  Again,"  says  Mr.  Parkman,  "  they  embarked  ;  and  with 
every  stage  of  their  adventurous  progress,  the  mystery  of 
this  vast  new  world  was  more  and  more  unveiled.  More  and 
more  they  entered  the  realms  of  spring.  The  hazy  sunlight, 
the  warm  and  drowsy  air,  the  tender  foliage,  the  opening 
flowers,  betokened  the  reviving  life  of  nature." 


LA   SALLE    ON   THE    ICE. 


Day  by  day  they  floated  down  the  great  bends,  in  the 
shadow  of  the  dense  forests,  and  in  time  arrived  at  the 
mouth  of  the  Arkansas.  First,  they  were  greeted  by 
the  natives  of  this  locality  as  Marquette  had  before  been 
greeted  hy  them  —  with  the  booming  of  the  war  drum  and 
the  flourish  of  arms.  The  Virgin  composed  the  difficulty  in 
Marquette's  case  ;  the  pipe  of  peace  did  the  same  office  for 
La  Salle.  The  white  man  and  the  red  man  struck  hands  and 
entertained  each    other  during   three   days.     Then,  to  the 


PIOUS  ROBBERY. 


37 


admiration  of  the  savages,  La  Salle  set  up  a  cross  with  the 
arms  of  France  on  it,  and  took  possession  of  the  whole  coun- 
try for  the  king  —  the  cool  fashion  of  the  time  —  while  the 
priest  piously  consecrated  the  robbery  with  a  hymn.  The 
priest  explained  the  mysteries  of  the  faith  "  by  signs,"  for 
the  saving  of  the  savages  ;  thus  compensating  them  with  pos- 


CONSECRATING   THE   KOEBERY. 


sible  possessions  in  Heaven  for  the  certain  ones  on  earth 
which  they  had  just  been  robbei  of.  And  also,  by  signs, 
La  Salle  drew  from  these  simple  children  of  the  forest 
acknowledgments  of  fealty  to  Louis  the  Putrid,  over  the 
water.     Nobody  smiled  at  these  colossal  ironies. 

These  performances  took  place  on  the  site  of  the  future 


38 


THE  FUTURE   NAPOLEON. 


town  of  Napoleon,  Arkansas,  and  there  the  first  confiscation- 
cross  was  raised  on  the  banks  of  the  great  river.  Marquette's 
and  Joliet's  voyage  of  discovery  ended  at  the  same  spot  — 
the  site  of  the  future  town  of  Napoleon.  When  De  Soto 
took  his  fleeting  glimpse  of  the  river,  away  back  in  the 
dim  early  days,  he  took  it  from  that  same  spot  —  the  site 


THE    TEMPLE   WALL 


of  the  future  town  of  Napoleon, 
Arkansas.  Therefore,  three  out  of  the 
four  memorable  events  connected  with  the  discovery  and  ex- 
ploration of  the  mighty  river  occurred,  by  accident,  in  one 
and  the  same  place.  It  is  a  most  curious  distinction,  when 
one  comes  to  look  at  it  and  think  about  it.  France  stole 
that  vast  country  on  that  spot,  the  future  Napoleon ;  and 
by  and  by  Napoleon  himself  was  to  give  the  country  back 
again !  —  make  restitution,  not  to  the  owners,  but  to  their 
white  American  heirs. 

The  voyagers  journeyed  on,  touching  here  and  there  ; 
"  passed  the  sites,  since  become  historic,  of  Vicksburg  and 
Grand  Gulf;"  and  visited  an  imposing  Indian  monarch  in 


GHASTLY  ORNAMENTS.  39 

the  Teche  country,  whose  capital  city  was  a  substantial  one 
of  sun-baked  bricks  mixed  with  straw  —  better  houses  than 
many  that  exist  there  now.  The  chief's  house  contained  an 
audience  room  forty  feet  square ;  and  there  he  received  Tonty 
in  State,  surrounded  by  sixty  old  men  clothed  in  white  cloaks. 
There  was  a  temple  in  the  town,  with  a  mud  wall  about  it 
ornamented  with  skulls  of  enemies  sacrificed  to  the  sun. 

The  voyagers  visited  the  Natchez  Indians,  near  the  site  of 
the  present  city  of  that  name,  where  they  found  a  "  religious 
and  political  despotism,  a  privileged  class  descended  from 
the  sun,  a  temple  and  a  sacred  fire."  It  must  have  been  like 
getting  home  again  ;  it  was  home  with  an  advantage,  in  fact, 
for  it  lacked  Louis  XIV. 

A  few  more  days  swept  swiftly  by,  and  La  Salle  stood  in 
the  shadow  of  his  confiscating  cross,  at  the  meeting  of  the 
waters  from  Delaware,  and  from  Itaska,  and  from  the  moun- 
tain ranges  close  upon  the  Pacific,  with  the  waters  of  the 
Gulf  of  Mexico,  his  task  finished,  his  prodigy  achieved.  Mr. 
Parkman,  in  closing  his  fascinating  narrative,  thus  sums  up  : 

"  On  that  day,  the  realm  of  France  received  on  parchment  a  stu- 
pendous accession.  The  fertile  plains  of  Texas ;  the  vast  basin  of 
the  Mississippi,  from  its  frozen  northern  springs  to  the  sultry  bor- 
ders of  the  Gulf ;  from  the  woody  ridges  of  the  Alleghanies  to  the 
bare  peaks  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  —  a  region  of  savannas  and 
forests,  sun-cracked  deserts  and  grassy  prairies,  watered  by  a  thou- 
sand rivers,  ranged  by  a  thousand  warlike  tribes,  passed  beneath  the 
sceptre  of  the  Sultan  of  Versailles  ;  and  all  by  virtue  of  a  feeble 
human  voice,  inaudible  at  half  a  mile." 


CHAPTER  III. 

FRESCOES  FROM   THE   PAST. 


APPARENTLY  the  river  was  ready  for  business,  now. 
But  no,  the  distribution  of  a  population  along  its 
banks  was  as  calm  and  deliberate  and  time-devouring  a 
process  as  the  discovery  and  exploration  had  been. 


EABLY   NAVIGATION. 


'^SwSfe 


Seventy  years  elapsed, 
after  the  exploration,  be- 
fore the  river's  borders  had 
a  white  population  worth  considering;  and  nearly  fifty  more 
before  the  river  had  a  commerce.  Between  La  Salle's  open- 
ing of  the  river  and  the  time  when  it  may  be  said  to  have 
become  the  vehicle  of  anything  like  a  regular  and  active 
commerce,  seven   sovereigns   had   occupied   the   throne   of 


COMMERCE   BEGINS.  41 

England,  America  had  become  an  independent  nation,  Louis 
XIV.  and  Louis  XV.  had  rotted  and  died,  the  French  mon- 
archy had  gone  down  in  the  red  tempest  of  the  revolution, 
and  Napoleon  was  a  name  that  was  beginning  to  be  talked 
about.     Truly,  there  were  snails  in  those  days. 

The  river's  earliest  commerce  was  in  great  barges  —  keel- 
boats,  broadhorns.  They  floated  and  sailed  from  the  upper 
rivers  to  New  Orleans,  changed  cargoes  there,  and  were 
tediously  warped  and  poled  back  by  hand.  A  voyage  down 
and  back  sometimes  occupied  nine '  months.  In  time  this 
commerce  increased  until  it  gave  employment  to  hordes  of 
rough  and  hardy  men ;  rude,  uneducated,  brave,  suffering 
terrific  hardships  with  sailor-like  stoicism ;  heavy  drinkers, 
coarse  frolickers  in  moral  sties  like  the  Natchez-under-the- 
hill  of  that  day,  heavy  fighters,  reckless  fellows,  every  one, 
elephantinely  jolly,  foul-witted,  profane  ;  prodigal  of  their 
money,  bankrupt  at  the  end  of  the  trip,  fond  of  barbaric 
finery,  prodigious  braggarts  ;  yet,  in  the  main,  honest,  trust- 
worthy, faithful  to  promises  and  duty,  and  often  picturesquely 
magnanimous. 

By  and  by  the  steamboat  intruded.  Then,  for  fifteen  or 
twenty  years,  these  men  continued  to  run  their  keelboats 
down-stream,  and  the  steamers  did  all  of  the  up-stream 
business,  the  keelboatmen  selling  their  boats  in  New  Orleans, 
and  returning  home  as  deck  passengers  in  the  steamers. 

But  after  a  while  the  steamboats  so  increased  in  number 
and  in  speed  that  they  were  able  to  absorb  the  entire  com- 
merce ;  and  then  keelboating  died  a  permanent  death.  The 
keelboatman  became  a  deck  hand,  or  a  mate,  or  a  pilot  on 
the  steamer ;  and  when  steamer-berths  were  not  open  to 
him,  he  took  a  berth  on  a  Pittsburgh  coal-flat,  or  on  a  pine- 
raft  constructed  in  the  forests  up  toward  the  sources  of  the 
Mississippi. 

In  the  heyday  of  the  steamboating  prosperity,  the  river 
from  end  to  end  was  flaked  with  coal-fleets  and  timber  rafts, 
all  managed  by  hand,  and  employing  hosts  of   the  rough 


42 


MIGHTY   RAFTS. 


characters  whom  I  have  been  trying  to  describe.  I  remem- 
ber the  annual  processions  of  mighty  rafts  that  used  to  glide 
by  Hannibal  when  I  was  a  boy,  —  an  acre  or  so  of  white, 
sweet-smelling  boards  in  each  raft,  a  crew  of  two  dozen  men 
or  more,  three  or  four  wigwams  scattered  about  the  raft's 
vast  level  space  for  storm-quarters,  —  and  I  remember  the 
rude  ways  and  the  tremendous  talk  of  their  big  crews,  the 
ex-keelboatmen  and  their  admiringly  patterning  successors  ; 
for  we  used  to  swim  out  a  quarter  or  third  of  a  mile  and  get 
on  these  rafts  and  have  a  ride. 


dl^^fe 


£..l^j'Q,t<^LTr, 


A   LUMBER  RAFT. 


By  way  of  illustrating  keelboat  talk  and  manners,  and 
that  now-departed  and  hardly-remembered  raft-life,  I  will 
throw  in,  in  this  place,  a  chapter  from  a  book  which  I  have 
been  working  at,  by  fits  and  starts,  during  the  past  five  or 
six  years,  and  may  possibly  finish  in  the  course  of  five  or  six 
more.  The  book  is  a  story  which  details  some  passages  in 
the  life  of  an  ignorant  village  boy,  Huck  Finn,  son  of  the 
town  drunkard  of  my  time  out  west,  there.  He  has  run 
away  from  his  persecuting  father,  and  from  a  persecuting 
good  widow  who  wishes  to  make  a  nice,  truth-telling,  respect- 
able boy  of  him  ;  and  with  him  a  slave  of  the  widow's  has 


AN   UNPUBLISHED   CHAPTER. 


43 


also  escaped.  They  have  found  a  fragment  of  a  lumber  raft 
(it  is  high  water  and  dead  summer  time),  and  are  floating- 
down  the  river  by  night,  and  hiding  in  the  willows  by  day,  — 
bound  for  Cairo,  ■ —  whence  the  negro  will  seek  freedom  in 
the  heart  of  the  free  States.  But  in  a  fog,  they  pass  Cairo 
without  knowing  it.  By  and  by  they  begin  to  suspect  the 
truth,  and  Huck  Finn  is  persuaded  to  end  the  dismal  sus- 
pense by  swimming  down  to  a  huge  raft  which  they  have 
seen  in  the  distance  ahead  of  them,  creeping  aboard  under 
cover  of  the  darkness,  and  gathering  the  needed  information 
by  eavesdropping :  — 

But  you  know  a  young  person  can't  wait  very  well  when  he  is 
impatient  to  find  a  thing  out.  We  talked  it  over,  and  by  and  by 
Jim  said  it  was  such  a  black  night,  now,  that  it  would  n't  be  no  risk 


"I  SWUM  ALONG  THE   BAFT." 

to  swim  down  to  the  big 
raft  and  crawl  aboard  and 
listen,  —  they  would  talk  about  Cairo,  because  they  would  be  calcu- 
lating to  go  ashore  there  for  a  spree,  maybe,  or  anyway  they  would 
send  boats  ashore  to  buy  whiskey  or  fresh  meat  or  something.  Jim 
had  a  wonderful  level  head,  for  a  nigger :  he  could  most  always 
start  a  good  plan  when  you  wanted  one. 

I  stood  up  and  shook  my  rags  off  and  jumped  into  the  river,  and 
struck  out  for  the  raft's  light.     By  and  by,  when  I  got  down  nearly 


44  "GIVE  US  A  REST." 

to  her,  I  eased  up  and  went  slow  and  cautious.  But  everything  was 
all  right  —  nobody  at  the  sweeps.  So  I  swum  down  along  the  raft 
till  I  was  most  abreast  the  camp  fire  in  the  middle,  then  1  crawled 
aboard  and  inched  along  and  got  in  amongst  some  bundles  of  shin- 
gles on  the  weather  side  of  the  fire.  There  was  thirteen  men  there 
—  they  was  the  watch  on  deck  of  course.  And  a  mighty  rouEjh- 
looking  lot,  too.  They  had  a  jug,  and  tin  cups,  and  they  kept  the 
jug  moving.  One  man  was  singing  —  roaring,  you  may  say;  and 
it  wasn't  a  nice  song  —  for  a  parlor  anyway.  He  roared  through 
his  nose,  and  strung  out  the  last  word  of  every  line  very  long. 
When  he  was  done  they  all  fetched  a  kind  of  Injun  war-whoop, 
and  then  another  was  sung.     It  begun  :  — 

"  There  was  a  woman  in  our  towdn, 
In  our  towdn  did  dwed'l  (dwell,) 
She  loved  her  husband  dear-i-lee, 
But  another  man  twyste  as  wed'l. 

Singing  too,  riloo,  riloo,  riloo, 

Ri-too,  riloo,  rilay  -  -  -  e, 
She  loved  her  husband  dear-i-lee, 

But  another  man  twyste  as  wed'l." 

And  so  on  —  fourteen  verses.  It  was  kind  of  poor,  and  when  he 
was  going  to  start  on  the  next  verse  one  of  them  said  it  was  the 
tune  the  old  cow  died  on ;  and  another  one  said,  "  Oh,  give  Us  a 
rest."  And  another  one  told  him  to  take  a  walk.  They  made 
fun  of  him  till  he  got  mad  and  jumped  up  and  begun  to  cuss  the 
crowd,  and  said  he  could  lam  any  thief  in  the  lot. 

They  was  all  about  to  make  a  break  for  him,  but  the  biggest 
man  there  jumped  up  and  says  :  — 

"  Set  whar  you  are,  gentlemen.  Leave  him  to  me ;  he  's  my 
meat." 

Then  he  jumped  up  in  the  air  three  times  and  cracked  his  heels 
together  every  time.  He  flung  off  a  buckskin  coat  that  was  all 
hung  with  fringes,  and  says,  "  You  lay  thar  tell  the  chawin-up  's 
done ;  "  and  flung  his  hat  down,  which  was  all  over  ribbons,  and 
says,  "  You  lay  thar  tell  his  sufferins  is  over." 

Then  he  jumped  up  in  the  air  and  cracked  his  heels  together 
again  and  shouted  out :  — 

"  Whoo-oop !    I  'm  the  old  original  iron-jawed,   brass-mounted, 


THE   CORPSE-MAKER   CROWS. 


45 


copper-bellied  corpse-maker  from  the  wilds  of  Arkansaw !  —  Look 
at  me  !  I  'm  the  man  they  call  Sudden  Death  and  General  Desola- 
tion !  Sired  by  a  hurricane,  dam'd  by  an  earthquake,  half-brother 
to  the  cholera,  nearly  related  to  the  small-pox  on  the  mother's  side ! 
Look  at  me !     I  take  nineteen  alligators  and  a  bar'l  of  whiskey  for 


breakfast  when  I  'm  in  ro- 
bust health,  and  a  bushel  of  rattle- 
snakes and  a  dead  body  when  I  'm  ailing ! 
I  split  the  everlasting  rocks  with  my  glance, 
and  I  squench  the  thunder  when  I  speak !  Whoo-oop  !  Stand  back 
and  give  me  room  according  to  my  strength  !  Blood  's  my  natural 
drink,  and  the  wails  of  the  dying  is  music  to  my  ear  !  Cast  your 
eye  on  me,  gentlemen !  —  and  lay  low  end  hold  your  breath,  for 
I  'm  bout  to  turn  myself  loose  !  " 

All  the  time  he  was  getting  this  off,  he  was  shaking  his  head  and 
looking  fierce,  and  kind  of  swelling  around  in  a  little  circle,  tucking 
up  his  wrist-bands,  and  now  and  then  straightening  up  and  beating 


46 


"THE   CHILD   OF  CALAMITY." 


his  breast  with,  his  fist,  saying,  "  Look  at  me,  gentlemen !  "  When 
he  got  through,  he  jumped  up  and  cracked  his  heels  together  three 
times,  and  let  off  a  roaring  "  whoo-oop  !  I  'm  the  bloodiest  son  of 
a  wildcat  that  lives !  " 

Then  the  man  that  had  started  the  row  tilted  his  old  slouch  hat 
down  over  his  right  eye  ;  then  he  bent  stooping  forward,  with  his  back 

sagged  and  his  south  end 
sticking  out  far,  and  his  fists 
a-shoving  out  and  drawing  in 
in  front  of  him,  and  so  went 
around  in  a  little  circle  about 
three  times,  swelling  himself 
up  and  breathing  hard.  Then 
he  straightened,  and  jumped 
up  and  cracked  his  heels  to- 
gether three  times  before  he 
lit  again  (that  made  them 
cheer),  and  he  begun  to  shout 
like  this :  — 

"  Whoo-oop  !  bow  your  neck 
and  spread,  for  the  kingdom 
of  sorrow  's  a-coming  !  Hold 
me  down  to  the  earth,  for  I 
feel  my  powers  a-working ! 
whoo-oop  !  I  'm  a  child  of 
sin,  don't  let  me  get  a  start ! 
Smoked  glass,  here,  for  all ! 
Don't  attempt  to  look  at  me 
with  the  naked  eye,  gentle- 
men !  When  I  'm  playful  I 
use  the  meridians  of  longi- 
tude and  parallels  of  latitude 
for  a  seine,  and  drag  the  Atlantic  Ocean  for  whales  !  I  scratch 
my  head  with  the  lightning  and  purr  myself  to  sleep  with  the 
thunder  !  When  I  'm  cold,  I  bile  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  and  bathe  in 
it ;  when  I  'm  hot  I  fan  myself  with  an  equinoctial  storm ;  when 
I  'm  thirsty  I  reach  up  and  suck  a  cloud  dry  like  a  sponge  ;  when 
I  range   the   earth  hungry,  famine  follows  in  my  tracks !    Whoo- 


WENT   AROUND    IN   A    CIRCLE. 


THEY  BOTH   WEAKEN.  47 

oop !  Bow  your  neck  and  spread !  I  put  my  hand  on  the  sun's 
face  and  make  it  night  in  the  earth ;  I  bite  a  piece  out  of  the 
moon  and  hurry  the  seasons ;  I  shake  myself  and  crumble  the 
mountains !  Contemplate  me  through  leather  —  don't  use  the  naked 
eye !  I  'm  the  man  with  a  petrified  heart  and  biler-iron  bowels  ! 
The  massacre  of  isolated  communities  is  the  pastime  of  my  idle 
moments,  the  destruction  of  nationalities  the  serious  business  of 
my  life !  The  boundless  vastness  of  the  great  American  desert  is 
my  enclosed  property,  and  I  bury  my  dead  on  my  own  premises  !  " 
He  jumped  up  and  cracked  his  heels  together  three  times  before  he 
lit  (they  cheered  him  again),  and  as  he  come  down  he  shouted  out: 
"  Whoo-oop  !  bow  your  neck  and  spread,  for  the  pet  child  of  calam- 
ity 's  a-coming !  " 

Then  the  other  one  went  to  swelling  around  and  blowing  again  — 
the  first  one — the  one  they  called  Bob ;  next,  the  Child  of  Calamity 
chipped  in  again,  bigger  than  ever ;  then  they  both  got  at  it  at  the 
same  time,  swelling  round  and  round  each  other  and  punching  their 
fists  most  into  each  other's  faces,  and  whooping  and  jawing  like 
Injuns  ;  then  Bob  called  the  Child  names,  and  the  Child  called 
him  names  back  again :  next,  Bob  called  him  a  heap  rougher  names 
and  the  Child  come  back  at  him  with  the  very  worst  kind  of  lan- 
guage ;  next,  Bob  knocked  the  Child's  hat  off,  and  the  Child  picked 
it  up  and  kicked  Bob's  ribbony  hat  about  six  foot ;  Bob  went  and 
got  it  and  said  never  mind,  this  war  n't  going  to  be  the  last  of  this 
thing,  because  he  w'as  a  man  that  never  forgot  and  never  forgive, 
and  so  the  Child  better  look  out,  for  there  was  a  time  a-coming, 
just  as  sure  as  he  was  a  living  man,  that  he  would  have  to  answer 
to  him  with  the  best  blood  in  his  body.  The  Child  said  no  man 
was  willinger  than  he  was  for  that  time  to  come,  and  he  would 
give  Bob  fair  warning,  now,  never  to  cross  his  path  again,  for  he 
could  never  rest  till  he  had  waded  in  his  blood,  for  such  was  his 
nature,  though  he  was  sparing  him  now  on  account  of  his  family, 
if  he  had  one. 

Both  of  them  was  edging  away  in  different  directions,  growling 
and  shaking  their  heads  and  going  on  about  what  they  was  going  to 
do  ;  but  a  little  black-whiskered  chap  skipped  up  and  says  :  — 

"  Come  back  here,  you  couple  of  chicken-livered  cowards,  and  I  '11 
thrash  the  two  of  ye  !  " 


48 


LITTLE   DAVY    STEPS   IN. 


And  he  done  it,  too.  He  snatched  them,  he  jerked  them  this 
way  and  that,  he  booted  them  around,  he  knocked  them  sprawling 
faster  than  they  could  get  up.  Why,  it  war  n't  two  minutes  till  they 
begged  like  dogs  —  and  how  the  other  lot  did  yell  and  laugh  and 
clap  their  hands  all  the  way  through,  and  shout  "  Sail  in,  Corpse- 


Ml?)>  . !)<-'! 


HE    KNOCKED   THEM   SPRAWLING. 


Maker  !  "  "  Hi !  at  him  again,  Child  of  Calamity  !  "  "  Bully  for  you, 
little  Davy  !  "  Well,  it  was  a  perfect  pow-wow  for  a  while.  Bob 
and  the  Child  had  red  noses  and  black  eyes  when  they  got  through. 
Little  Davy  made  them  own  up  that  they  was  sneaks  and  cowards 
and  not  fit  to  eat  with  a  dog  or  drink  with  a  nigger ;  then  Bob  and 
the  Child  shook  hands  with  each  other,  very  solemn,  and  said  they 


AFTER   THE  BATTLE. 


49 


had  always  respected  each  other  and  was  willing  to  let  bygones  be 
bygones.  So  then  they  washed  their  faces  in  the  river ;  and  just 
then  there  was  a  loud  order  to  stand  by  for  a  crossing,  and  some  of 
them  went  forward  to  man  the  sweeps  there,  and  the  rest  went  aft 
to  handle  the  after-sweeps. 

I  laid  still  and  waited  for  fifteen  minutes,  and  had  a  smoke  out  of 
a  pipe  that  one  of  them  left  in  reach  ;  then  the  crossing  was  finished, 


AN   OLD-FASHIONED   BREAK-DOWN. 


and  they  stumped  back  and  had  a  drink  around  and  went  to  talking 
and  singing  again.  Next  they  got  out  an  old  fiddle,  and  one 
played,  and  another  patted  juba,  and  the  rest  turned  themselves 
loose  on  a  regular  old-fashioned  keel-boat  break-down.  They 
couldn't  keep  that  up  very  long  without  getting  winded,  so  by  and 
by  they  settled  around  the  jug  again. 

They  sung  "  jolly,  jolly  raftsman's  the  life  for  me,"  with  a  rousing 
chorus,  and  then  they  got  to  talking  about  differences  betwixt  hogs, 
and  their  different  kind  of  habits  ;    and  next  about  women  and  their 

4 


50  ED'S   ADVENTURES. 

different  ways ;  and  next  about  the  best  ways  to  put  out  houses  that 
was  afire ;  and  next  about  what  ought  to  be  done  with  the  Injuns  ; 
and  next  about  what  a  king  had  to  do,  and  how  much  he  got ; 
and  next  about  how  to  make  cats  fight ;  and  next  about  what  to 
do  when  a  man  has  fits  ;  and  next  about  differences  betwixt  clear- 
water  rivers  and  muddy-water  ones.  The  man  they  called  Ed  said 
the  muddy  Mississippi  water  was  wholesomer  to  drink  than  the 
clear  water  of  the  Ohio  ;  he  said  if  you  let  a  pint  of  this  yaller 
Mississippi  water  settle,  you  would  have  about  a  half  to  three 
quarters  of  an  inch  of  mud  in  the  bottom,  according  to  the  stage  of 
the  river,  and  then  it  war  n't  no  better  then  Ohio  water  —  what 
you  wanted  to  do  was  to  keep  it  stirred  up  —  and  when  the  river 
was  low,  keep  mud  on  hand  to  put  in  and  thicken  the  water  up  the 
way  it  ought  to  be. 

The  Child  of  Calamity  said  that  was  so  ;  he  said  there  was  nutri- 
tiousness  in  the  mud,  and  a  man  that  drunk  Mississippi  water  could 
grow  corn  in  his  stomach  if  he  wanted  to.     He  says :  — 

"  You  look  at  the  graveyards  ;  that  tells  the  tale.  Trees  won't 
grow  worth  shucks  in  a  Cincinnati  graveyard,  but  in  a  Sent  Louis 
graveyard  they  grow  upwards  of  eight  hundred  foot  high.  It 's  all 
on  account  of  the  water  the  people  drunk  before  they  laid  up.  A 
Cincinnati  corpse  don't  richen  a  soil  any." 

And  they  talked  about  how  Ohio  water  did  n't  like  to  mix  with 
Mississippi  water.  Ed  said  if  you  take  the  Mississippi  on  a  rise 
when  the  Ohio  is  low,  you  '11  find  a  wide  band  of  clear  water  all  the 
way  down  the  east  side  of  the  Mississippi  for  a  hundred  mile  or 
more,  and  the  minute  you  get  out  a  quarter  of  a  mile  from  shore 
and  pass  the  line,  it  is  all  thick  and  yaller  the  rest  of  the  way  across. 
Then  they  talked  about  how  to  keep  tobacco  from  getting  mouldy, 
and  from  that  they  went  into  ghosts  and  told  about  a  lot  that  other 
folks  had  seen  ;  but  Ed  saj^s  :  — 

"  Why  don't  you  tell  something  that  you  've  seen  yourselves  ? 
Now  let  me  have  a  say.  Five  years  ago  I  was  on  a  raft  as  big  as 
this,  and  right  along  here  it  was  a  bright  moonshiny  night,  and  I 
was  on  watch  and  boss  of  the  stabboard  oar  forrard,  and  one  of  my 
pards  was  a  man  named  Dick  Allbright,  and  he  come  along  to  where 
I  was  sitting,  forrard  —  gaping  and  stretching,  he  was  —  and 
stooped  down  on  the  edge  of  the  raft  and  washed  his  face  in  the 


SOMETHING   QUEER. 


51 


river,  and  come  and  set  down  by  me  and  got  out  his  pipe,  and  had 
just  got  it  filled,  when  he'  looks  up  and  says,  — 

"  '  Why  looky-here,'  he  says,  '  ain't  that  Buck  Miller's  place,  over 
yander  in  the  bend  ?  ' 

" '  Yes,'  says  I,  '  it  is  — why  ?  '    He  laid  his  pipe  down  and  leant 
his  head  on  his  hand,  and  says,  — 

"  '  I  thought  we  'd  be  furder  down.'     I  says,  — 

"  '  I  thought  it  too,  when  I  went  off  watch  '  —  we  was  standing 
six  hours  on  and  six  off —  'but  the  boys  told  me,'  I  says,  '  that  the 
raft  didn't  seem  to  hard- 
ly move,  for  the  last 
hour,'  —  says  I, '  though 
she 's  a  slipping  along 
all  right,  now,'  says  I. 
He  give  a  kind  of  a 
groan,  and  says,  — 

"  '  I  've  seed  a  raft  act 
so  before,  along  here,' 
he  says,  '  'pears  to  me 
the  current  has  most 
quit  above  the  head  of 
this  bend  durin'  the  last 
two  years,'  he  says. 

"Well,  he  raised  up 
two  or  three  times,  and 
looked  away  off  and 
around  on  the  water. 
That  started  me  at  it, 
too.  A  body  is  always 
doing     what     he     sees 

somebody  else  doing,  though  there  mayn't  be  no  sense  in  it. 
Pretty  soon  I  see  a  black  something  floating  on  the  water  away  off 
to  stabboard  and  quartering  behind  us.  I  see  he  was  looking  at 
it,  too.     I  says,  — 

"  '  What 's  that  ?  '    He  says,  sort  of  pettish,  — 

"  '  Tain't  nothing  but  an  old  empty  bar'L' 

"  '  An  empty  bar'l ! '  says  I,  '  why,'  says  I,  '  a  spy-glass  is  a  fool 
to  your  eyes.     How  can  you  tell  it 's  an  empty  bar'l  ? '    He  says,  — 


THE    MYSTERIOUS   BARBEL. 


52  A   HAUNTED   BARREL. 

"  '  I  don't  know  ;  I  reckon  it  ain't  a  bar'l,  but  I  thought  it  might 
be,'  says  he. 

"  '  Yes,'  I  says,  '  so  it  might  be,  and  it  might  be  anything  else, 
too  ;  a  body  can't  tell  nothing  about  it,  such  a  distance  as  that,'  I 
says. 

"  We  had  n't  nothing  else  to  do,  so  we  kept  on  watching  it.  By 
and  by  I  says,  — 

"  '  Why  looky-here,  Dick  Allbright,  that  thing  's  a-gaining  on  us, 
I  believe.' 

"  He  never  said  nothing.  The  thing  gained  and  gained,  and  I 
judged  it  must  be  a  dog  that  was  about  tired  out.  Well,  we  swung 
down  into  the  crossing,  and  the  thing  floated  across  the  bright  streak 
of  the  moonshine,  and,  by  George,  it  was  a  bar'l.     Says  I,  — 

"  '  Dick  Allbright,  what  made  you  think  that  thing  was  a  bar'l, 
when  it  was  a  half  a  mile  off,'  says  I.     Says  he,  — 

"  '  I  don't  know.'     Says  I,  — 

"  '  You  tell  me,  Dick  Allbright.'     He  says,  — 

"  '  Well,  I  knowed  it  was  a  bar'l ;  I  've  seen  it  before  ;  lots  has 
seen  it ;  they  says  it 's  a  hanted  bar'l.' 

"  I  called  the  rest  of  the  watch,  and  they  come  and  stood  there, 
and  I  told  them  what  Dick  said.  It  floated  right  along  abreast, 
now,  and  did  n't  gain  any  more.  It  was  about  twenty  foot  off. 
Some  was  for  having  it  aboard,  but  the  rest  did  n't  want  to.  Dick 
Allbright  said  rafts  that  had  fooled  with  it  had  got  bad  luck  by  it. 
The  captain  of  the  watch  said  he  did  n't  believe  in  it.  He  said  he 
reckoned  the  bar'l  gained  on  us  because  it  was  in  a  little  better  cur- 
rent than  what  we  was.     He  said  it  would  leave  by  and  by. 

"  So  then  we  went  to  talking  about  other  things,  and  we  had  a 
song,  and  then  a  breakdown  ;  and  after  that  the  captain  of  the 
watch  called  for  another  song ;  but  it  was  clouding  up,  now,  and 
the  bar'l  stuck  right  thar  in  the  same  place,  and  the  song  didn't 
seem  to  have  much  warm-up  to  it,  somehow,  and  so  they  did  n't 
finish  it,  and  there  war  n't  any  cheers,  but  it  sort  of  dropped  flat, 
and  nobody  said  anything  for  a  minute.  Then  everybody  tried  to 
talk  at  once,  and  one  chap  got  off  a  joke,  but  it  war  n't  no  use, 
they  did  n't  laugh,  and  even  the  chap  that  made  the  joke  did  n't 
laugh  at  it,  which  ain't  usual.  We  all  just  settled  down  glum,  and 
watched  the  bar'l,  and  was  oneasy  and  oncomfortable.     Well,  sir,  it 


IT  BEINGS  A  STORM. 


53 


shut  down  black  and  still)  and  then  the  wind  begin  to  moan  around, 
and  next  the  lightning  begin  to  play  and  the  thunder  to  grumble. 
And  pretty  soon  there  was  a  regular  storm,  and  in  the  middle  of 
it  a  man  that  was  running  aft  stumbled  and  fell  and  sprained  his 
ankle  so  that  he  had  to  lay  up.  This  made  the  boys  shake  their 
heads.  And  every  time  the  lightning  come,  there  was  that  bar'l 
with  the  blue  lights  winking  around  it.     We  was  always  on   the 


"  SOON    THERE   WAS   A   REGULAR   STORM." 


look-out  for  it.  But  by  and  by,  towards  dawn,  she  was  gone.  When 
the  day  come  we  could  n't  see  her  anywhere,  and  we  war  n't  sorry, 
neither. 

"  But  next  night  about  half-past  nine,  when  there  was  songs  and 
high  jinks  going  on,  here  she  comes  again,  and  took  her  old  roost 
on  the  stabboard  side.  There  war  n't  no  more  high  jinks.  Every- 
body got  solemn  ;  nobody  talked  ;  you  could  n't  get  anybody  to  do 


54  THE   BARREL   PURSUES. 

anything  but  set  around  moody  and  look  at  the  bar'l.  It  begun  to 
cloud  up  again.  When  the  watch  changed,  the  off  watch  stayed  up, 
'stead  of  turning  in.  The  storm  ripped  and  roared  around  all  night, 
and  in  the  middle  of  it  another  man  tripped  and  sprained  his  ankle, 
and  had  to  knock  off.  The  bar'l  left  towards  day,  and  nobody  see 
it  go. 

"  Everybody  was  sober  and  down  in  the  mouth  all  day.  I  don't 
mean  the  kind  of  sober  that  comes  of  leaving  liquor  alone,  —  not 
that.  They  was  quiet,  but  they  all  drunk  more  than  usual,  —  not 
together,  —  but  each  man  sidled  off  and  took  it  private,  by  himself. 

"  After  dark  the  off  watch  did  n't  turn  in  ;  nobody  sung,  nobody 
talked  ;  the  boys  did  n't  scatter  around,  neither  ;  they  sort  of  huddled 
together,  forrard  ;  and  for  two  hours  they  set  there,  perfectly  still, 
looking  steady  in  the  one  direction,  and  heaving  a  sigh  once  in  a 
while.  And  then,  here  comes  the  bar'l  again.  She  took  up  her 
old  place.  She  staid  there  all  night ;  nobody  turned  in.  The  storm 
come  on  again,  after  midnight.  It  got  awful  dark  ;  the  rain  poured 
down  ;  hail,  too  ;  the  thunder  boomed  and  roared  and  bellowed  ;  the 
wind  blowed  a  hurricane  ;  and  the  lightning  spread  over  everything 
in  big  sheets  of  glare,  and  showed  the  whole  raft  as  plain  as  day ; 
and  the  river  lashed  up  white  as  milk  as  far  as  you  could  see  for 
miles,  and  there  was  that  bar'l  jiggering  along,  same  as  ever.  The 
captain  ordered  the  watch  to  man  the  after  sweeps  for  a  crossing, 
and  nobody  would  go,  —  no  more  sprained  ankles  for  them,  they 
said.  They  would  n't  even  walk  aft.  Well  then,  just  then  the  sky 
split  wide  open,  with  a  crash,  and  the  lightning  killed  two  men  of 
the  after  watch,  and  crippled  two  more.  Crippled  them  how,  says 
you  ?     Why,  sprained  their  ankles  ! 

"  The  bar'l  left  in  the  dark  betwixt  lightnings,  towards  dawn. 
Well,  not  a  body  eat  a  bite  at  breakfast  that  morning.  After  that 
the  men  loafed  around,  in  twos  and  threes,  and  talked  low  together. 
But  none  of  them  herded  with  Dick  Allbright.  They  all  give  him 
the  cold  shake.  If  he  come  around  where  any  of  the  men  was,  they 
split  up  and  sidled  away.  They  would  n't  man  the  sweeps  with  him. 
The  captain  had  all  the  skiffs  hauled  up  on  the  raft,  alongside  of 
his  wigwam,  and  would  n't  let  the  dead  men  be  took  ashore  to  be 
planted  ;  he  did  n't  believe  a  man  that  got  ashore  would  come  back  ; 
and  he  was  risdit. 


KILLED   BY  LIGHTNING. 


55 


"  After  night  come,  you  could  see  pretty  plain  that  there  was 
going  to  be  trouble  if  that  bar'l  come  again ;  there  was  such  a 
muttering  going  on.  A  good  many  wanted  to  kill  Dick  Allbright, 
because  he'd  seen  the  bar'l  on  other  trips,  and  that  had  an  ugly 
look.  Some  wanted  to  put  him 
ashore.  Some  said,  let 's  all  go 
ashore  in  a  pile,  if  the  bar'l 
comes  again. 

"  This  kind  of  whispers  was 
still  going  on,  the  men  being 
bunched  together  forrard 
watching  for  the  bar'l,  when, 
lo  and  behold  you,  here  she 
comes  again.  Down  she  comes, 
slow  and  steady,  and  settles 
into  her  old  tracks.  You  could 
a  heard  a  pin  drop.  Then  up 
comes  the  captain,  and  says  :  — 

"  '  Boys,  don't  be  a  pack  of 
children  and  fools ;  I  don't 
want  this  bar'l  to  be  dogging 
us  all  the  way  to  Orleans,  and 
you  don't;  well,  then,  how's 
the  best  way  to  stop  it  ?  Burn 
it  up,  —  that 's  the  way.  I  'm 
going  to  fetch  it  aboard,'  he 
says.  And  before  anybody 
could  say  a  word,  in  he  went. 

"  He  swum  to  it,  and  as  he 
come  pushing  it  to  the  raft, 
the  men  spread  to  one  side. 
But  the  old  man  got  it  aboard 

and  busted  in  the  head,  and  there  was  a  baby  in  it !  Yes  sir,  a 
stark  naked  baby.  It  was  Dick  Allbright's  baby  ;  he  owned  up 
and  said  so. 

"  '  Yes,'  he  says,  a-leaning  over  it,  '  yes,  it  is  my  own  lamented 
darling,  my  poor  lost  Charles  William  Allbright  deceased,'  says  he, 
—  for  he  could  curl  his  tongue  around  the  bulliest  words  in  the  lan- 


THE   LIGHTNING   KILLED   TWO   MEN. 


50 


ALLBRIGHT  ATONES. 


guage  when  he  was  a  mind  to,  and  lay  them  hefore  you  without  a 
jint  started,  anywheres.  Yes,  lie  said  he  used  to  live  up  at  the  head 
of  this  bend,  and  one  night  he  choked  his  child,  which  was  crying, 
not  intending  to  kill  it,  —  which  was  prob'ly  a  lie,  —  and  then  he  was 

scared,  and  buried  it  in 
a  bar'l,  before  his  wife 
got  home,  and  off  he 
went,  and  struck  the 
northern  trail  and  went 
to  rafting ;  and  this  was 
the  third  year  that  the 
bar'l  had  chased  him. 
He  said  the  bad  luck  al- 
ways begun  light,  and 
lasted  till  four  men  was 
killed,  and  then  the  bar'l 
did  n't  come  any  more 
after  that.  He  said  if 
the  men  w'ould  stand  it 
one  more  night, — and 
was  a-going  on  like  that, 
—  but  the  men  had  got 
enough.  They  started  to 
get  out  a  boat  to  take 
him  ashore  and  lynch 
him,  but  he  grabbed  the 
little  child  all  of  a  sud- 
den and  jumped  over- 
board with  it  hugged  up 
to  his  breast  and  shed- 
ding tears,  and  we  never  see  him  again  in  this  life,  poor  old  suffer- 
ing soul,  nor  Charles  William  neither." 

"  Who  was  shedding  tears  ?  "  says  Bob  ;  "  was  it  Allbright  or  the 
baby  ?  " 

"  Why,  Allbright,  of  course ;  didn't  I  tell  you  the  baby  was  dead  ? 
Been  dead  three  years  — how  could  it  cry  ?  " 

"  Well,  never  mind  how  it  could  cry  —  how  could  it  keep  all  that 
time  ?  "  says  Davy.     "  You  answer  me  that." 


GRABBED   THE    LITTLE    CHILD. 


ED   GETS    MAD. 


57 


"  I  don't  know  how  it  done  it,"  says  Ed.  "  It  done  it  though  — 
that 's  all  I  know  about  it." 

"  Say  —  what  did  they  do  with  the  bar'l  ? "  says  the  Child  of 
Calamity. 

"Why,  they  hove  it  overboard,  and  it  sunk  like  a  chunk  of 
lead." 

"  Edward,  did  the  child  look  like  it  was  choked  ?  "  says  one. 

"  Did  it  have  its  hair  parted  ?  "  says  another. 

"What  was  the  brand  on  that  bar'l,  Eddy?"  says  a  fellow  they 
called  Bill. 


"Have  you  got  the  papers  for 
them  statistics,  Edmund  ? "  says 
Jimmy. 

"  Say,  Edwin,  was   you  one  of 
the   men   that  was   killed   by  the 
lightning  ?  "  says  Davy. 
"Him?     O,  no,  he  was  both  of  'em,"  says  Bob.     Then  they  all 
haw-hawed. 

"  Say,  Edward,  don't  you  reckon  you  'd  better  take  a  pill  ?    You 
look  bad  —  don't  you  feel  pale?  "  says  the  Child  of  Calamity. 

"  O,  Come,  now,  Eddy,"  says  Jimmy,  "  show  up ;  you  must  a  kept 


58 


SNAKE  OR  BOY? 


part  of  that  bar'l  to  prove  the  thing  by.     Show  us  the  bunghole  — 
do  — and  we  '11  all  believe  you." 

"  Say,  boys,"  says  Bill,  "  less  divide  it  up.  Thar  's  thirteen  of  us. 
I  can  swaller  a  thirteenth  of  the  yarn,  if  you  can  worry  down  the 
rest." 

Ed  got  up  mad  and  said  /  —'"'.' 

they  could  all  go  to  some 
place  which  he 
ripped  out  pretty 
savage,  and  then 
walked  off  aft 
cussing  to  himself, 
and    they   yelling 


WHO  ARE   YOU?" 


and  jeering  at  him,  and  roaring  and 
laughing  so  you  could  hear  them  a 
mile. 

"  Boys,  we  '11  split  a  watermelon 

on  that,"  says  the  Child  of  Calamity  ; 

and  he  come  rummaging  around  in  the  dark  amongst  the  shingle 

bundles  where  I  was,  and  put  his  hand  on  me.     I  was  warm  and 

soft  and  naked  ;  so  he  says  "  Ouch !  "  and  jumped  back. 

"  Fetch  a  lantern  or  a  chunk  of  fire  here,  boys  —  there  's  a  snake 
here  as  big  as  a  cow !  " 

So  they  run  there  with  a  lantern  and  crowded  up  and  looked  in 
on  me. 

"  Come  out  of  that,  you  beggar !  "  says  one. 

"  Who  are  you  ?  "  says  another. 

"  What  are  you  after  here  ?     Speak  up  prompt,  or  overboard  you 


"SNAKE  HIM   OUT."  59 

"  Snake  him  out,  boys.     Snatch  him  out  by  the  heels." 

I  began  to  beg,  and  crept  out  amongst  them  trembling.  They 
looked  me  over,  wondering,  and  the  Child  of  Calamity  says  :  — 

"  A  cussed  thief !     Lend  a  hand  and  less  heave  him  overboard  !  " 

"  No,"  says  Big  Bob,  "  less  get  out  the  paint-pot  and  paint  him 
a  sky  blue  all  over  from  head  to  heel,  and  then  heave  him  over !  " 

"  Good  !  that 's  it.     Go  for  the  paint,  Jimmy." 

When  the  paint  come,  and  Bob  took  the  brush  and  was  just 
going  to  begin,  the  others  laughing  and  rubbing  their  hands,  I  begun 
to  cry,  and  that  sort  of  worked  on  Davy,  and  he  says  :  — 

"  'Vast  there  !  He  's  nothing  but  a  cub.  I  '11  paint  the  man  that 
fetches  him !  " 

So  I  looked  around  on  them,  and  some  of  them  grumbled  and 
growled,  and  Bob  put  down  the  paint,  and  the  others  did  n't  take  it 
up. 

"  Come  here  to  the  fire,  and  less  see  what  you  're  up  to  here," 
says  Davy.  "  Now  set  down  there  and  give  an  account  of  yourself. 
How  long  have  you  been  aboard  here  ?  " 

"  Not  over  a  quarter  of  a  minute,  sir,"  says  I. 

"  How  did  you  get  dry  so  quick  ?  " 

"  I  don't  know,  sir.     I  'm  always  that  way,  mostly." 

"  Oh,  you  are,  are  you  ?     What 's  your  name  ?  " 

I  war  n't  going  to  tell  my  name.  I  did  n't  know  what  to  say,  so 
I  just  says  : 

"  Charles  William  Allbright,  sir." 

Then  they  roared  —  the  whole  crowd ;  and  I  was  mighty  glad 
I  said  that,  because  maybe  laughing  would  get  them  in  a  better 
humor. 

When  they  got  done  laughing,  Davy  says  :  — 

"It  won't  hardly  do,  Charles  William.  You  couldn't  have 
growed  this  much  in  five  year,  and  you  was  a  baby  when  you  come 
out  of  the  bar'l,  you  know,  and  dead  at  that.  Come,  now,  tell  a 
straight  story,  and  nobody  '11  hurt  you,  if  you  ain't  up  to  anything 
wrong.     What  is  your  name  ?  " 

"  Aleck  Hopkins,  sir.     Aleck  James  Hopkins." 

"  Well,  Aleck,  where  did  you  come  from,  here  ?  " 

"  From  a  trading  scow.  She  lays  up  the  bend  yonder.  I  was 
born  on  her.     Pap  has  traded  up  and  down  here  all  his  life ;  and  he 


60 


SOME  LIVELY  LYING. 


told  me  to  swim  off  here,  because  when  you  went  by  he  said  he 
would  like  to  get  some  of  you  to  speak  to  a  Mr.  Jonas  Turner,  in 
Cairo,  and  tell  him  —  " 

"  Oh,  come  !  " 

"  Yes,  sir,  it 's  as  true  as  the  world ;  Pap  he  says  —  " 

"  Oh,  your  grandmother  !  " 

They  all  laughed,  and  I  tried  again  to  talk,  but  they  broke  in  on 
me  and  stopped  me. 


"  CHARLES   WILLIAM   ALLBBJGHT,    SLR." 

"  Now,  looky-here,"  says  Davy ;  "  you  're  scared,  and  so  you  talk 
wild.     Honest,  now,  do  you  live  in  a  scow,  or  is  it  a  lie  ?  " 

"Yes,  sir,  in  a  trading  scow.  She  lays  up  at  the  head  of  the 
bend.     But  I  war  n't  born  in  her.     It 's  our  first  trip." 

"  Now  you  're  talking !  What  did  you  come  aboard  here,  for  ? 
To  steal  ?  " 


* 


OFF  AND   OVERBOARD.  61 

"  No,  sir,  I  did  n't.  —  It  was  only  to  get  a  ride  on  the  raft.  All 
boys  does  that." 

"  Well,  I  know  that.     But  what  did  you  hide  for  ?  " 

"  Sometimes  they  drive  the  boys  off." 

"  So  they  do.  They  might  steal.  Looky-here;  if  we  let  you  off 
this  time,  will  you  keep  out  of  these  kind  of  scrapes  hereafter  ?  " 

"  'Deed  I  will,  boss.     You  try  me." 

"  All  right,  then.  You  ain't  but  little  ways  from  shore.  Over- 
board with  you,  and  don't  you  make  a  fool  of  yourself  another  time 
this  way.  —  Blast  it,  boy,  some  raftsmen  would  rawhide  you  till  you 
were  black  and  blue  !  " 

I  did  n't  wait  to  kiss  good-bye,  but  went  overboard  and  broke  for 
shore.  When  Jim  come  along  by  and  by,  the  big  raft  was  away  out 
of  sight  around  the  point.  I  swum  out  and  got  aboard,  and  was 
mighty  glad  to  see  home  again.        : 

The  boy  did  not  get  the  information  he  was  after,  but  his 
adventure  has  furnished  the  glimpse  of  the  departed  raftsman 
and  keelboatman  which  I  desire  to  offer  in  this  place. 

I  now  come  to  a  phase  of  the  Mississippi  River  life  of  the 
flush  times  of  steamboating,  which  seems  to  me  to  warrant 
full  examination  —  the  marvellous  science  of  piloting,  as  dis- 
played there.  I  believe  there  has  been  nothing  like  it  else- 
where in  the  world. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE   BOYS'  AMBITION. 


WHEN  I  was  a  boy,  there  was  but  one  permanent  am- 
bition among  my  comrades  in  our  village  2  on  the 
west  bank  of  the  Mississippi  River.      That  was,  to  be   a 
steamboatman.     We  had  transient  ambitions 
of  other  sorts,  but  they  were  only  transient. 


"OUR  PERMANENT   AMBITION." 

When  a  circus  came  and  went,  it  left  us  all  burning  to  be- 
come clowns ;  the  first  negro  minstrel  show  that  came  to  our 
section  left  us  all  suffering  to  try  that  kind  of  life ;  now  and 

1  Hannibal,  Missouri. 


A  DROWSY   TOWN. 


63 


then  we  had  a  hope  that  if  we  lived  and  were  good,  God 
would  permit  us  to  be  pirates.  These  ambitions  faded  out, 
each  in  its  turn ;  but  the  ambition  to  be  a  steamboatman 
always  remained. 

Once  a  day  a  cheap,  gaudy  packet  arrived  upward  from 


St.  Louis,  and 
ward  from 
these 


another  down- 
Keokuk.  Before 
events,  the  day 
was  glorious 
with  expectancy ; 
after  them,  the 
day  was  a  dead 
and  empty  thing. 
Not  only  the 
boys,  but  the 
whole  village, 
felt  this.  After 
all  these  years  I 
can  picture  that 
old  time  to  my- 
self now,  just  as 
it  was  then  :  the 
white  town 
drowsing  in  the 
sunshine  of  a 
summer's  morn- 
ing ;  the  streets 
empty,  or  pretty 
nearly  so ;  one  or 
two  clerks  sitting 
in  front  of  the  Water  Street  stores,  with  their  splint-bot- 
tomed chairs  tilted  back  against  the  wall,  chins  on  breasts, 
hats  slouched  over  their  faces,  asleep  —  with  shingle-shav- 
ings enough  around  to  show  what  broke  them  down;  a 
sow  and  a  litter  of  pigs  loafing  along  the  sidewalk,  doing 
a  good  business  in  watermelon  rinds   and  seeds ;   two  or 


WATER-STREET    CLERKS. 


64 


STEAMBOAT  COMIN' ! 


tliree  lonely  little  freight  piles  scattered  about  the  "  levee ; " 
a  pile  of  "skids"  on  the  slope  of  the  stone-paved  wharf, 
and  the  fragrant  town  drunkard  asleep  in  the  shadow  of 
them ;  two  or  three  wood  flats  at  the  head  of  the  wharf, 
but  nobody  to  listen  to  the  peaceful  lapping  of  the  wavelets 
against  them ;  the  great  Mississippi,  the  majestic,  the  mag- 
nificent Mississippi,  rolling  its  mile-wide  tide  along,  shining 
in  the  sun ;  the  dense  forest  away  on  the  other  side  ;  the 
"point"  above  the  town,  and  the  "point"  below,  bounding 


"all  go  hurrying 
to  the  wharf." 

the  river-glimpse  and  turning  it 
into  a  sort  of  sea,  and  withal  a 

very  still  and  brilliant  and  lonely  one.  Presently  a  film  of 
dark  smoke  appears  above  one  of  those  remote  "  points ; " 
instantly  a  negro  drayman,  famous  for  his  quick  eye  and 
prodigious  voice,  lifts  up  the  cry,  "  S-t-e-a-m-boat  a-comin' !  " 
and  the  scene  changes !  The  town  drunkard  stirs,  the 
clerks  wake  up,  a  furious  clatter  of  drays  follows,  every 
house  and  store  pours  out  a  human  contribution,  and  all 


UNDER   WAY   AGAIN.  65 

iii  a  twinkling  the  dead  town  is  alive  and  moving.  Drays, 
carts,  men,  boys,  all  go  hurrying  from  many  quarters  to 
a  common  centre,  the  wharf.  Assembled  there,  the  peo- 
ple fasten  their  eyes  upon  the  coining  boat  as  upon  a  won- 
der they  are  seeing  for  the  first  time.  And  the  boat  is 
rather  a  handsome  sight,  too.  She  is  long  and  sharp  and 
trim  and  pretty ;  she  has  two  tall,  fancy-topped  chimneys, 
with  a  gilded  device  of  some  kind  swung  between  them ;  a 
fanciful  pilot-house,  all  glass  and  "  gingerbread,"  perched  on 
top  of  the  "  texas  "  deck  behind  them ;  the  paddle-boxes  are 
gorgeous  with  a  picture  or  with  gilded  rays  above  the  boat's 
name ;  the  boiler  deck,  the  hurricane  deck,  and  the  texas 
deck  are  fenced  and  ornamented" with  clean  white  railings; 
there  is  a  flag  gallantly  flying  from  the  jack-staff;  the  fur- 
nace doors  are  open  and  the  fires  glaring  bravely ;  the  upper 
decks  are  black  with  passengers ;  the  captain  stands  by  the 
big  bell,  calm,  imposing,  the  envy  of  all ;  great  volumes  of 
the  blackest  smoke  are  rolling  and  tumbling  out  of  the 
chimneys  —  a  husbanded  grandeur  created  with  a  bit  of 
pitch  pine  just  before  arriving  at  a  town  ;  the  crew  are 
grouped  on  the  forecastle ;  the  broad  stage  is  run  far  out 
over  the  port  bow,  and  an  envied  deck-hand  stands  pic- 
turesquely on  the  end  of  it  with  a  coil  of  rope  in  his  hand ; 
the  pent  steam  is  screaming  through  the  gauge-cocks ;  the 
captain  lifts  his  hand,  a  bell  rings,  the  wheels  stop ;  then 
they  turn  back,  churning  the  water  to  foam,  and  the  steamer 
is  at  rest.  Then  such  a  scramble  as  there  is  to  get  aboard, 
and  to  get  ashore,  and  to  take  in  freight  and  to  discharge 
freight,  all  at  one  and  the  same  time ;  and  such  a  yelling 
and  cursing  as  the  mates  facilitate  it  all  with  !  Ten  min- 
utes later  the  steamer  is  under  way  again,  with  no  flag 
on  the  jack-staff  and  no  black  smoke  issuing  from  the 
chimneys.  After  ten  more  minutes  the  town  is  dead 
again,  and  the  town  drunkard  asleep  by  the  skids  once 
more. 

My  father  was  a  justice  of  the  peace,  and  I  supposed  he 


66 


WORLDLY   SUCCESS. 


possessed  the  power  of  life  and  death  over  all  men  and  could 
hang  anybody  that  offended  him.  This  was  distinction 
enough  for  me  as  a  general  thing ;  but  the  desire  to  be  a 
steamboatman  kept  intruding,  nevertheless.  I  first  wanted 
to  be  a  cabin-boy,  so  that  I  could  come  out  with  a  white 
apron  on  and  shake  a  table-cloth  over  the  side,  where  all  my 
old  comrades  could  see  me ;  later  I  thought  I  would  rather 

be   the   deck-hand 
who  stood  on  the 
end  of   the  stage- 
plank  with  the  coil 
of  rope  in  his  hand, 
because     he     was 
particularly      con- 
spicuous.      But 
these     were     only 
day-dreams, —  they 
were  too  heavenly 
to  be  contemplated 
as    real    possibili- 
ties.     By  and   by 
one    of    our    boys 
went    away.       He 
was  not  heard  of 
for    a    long    time. 
At  last  he  turned 
up    as    apprentice 
"  the  town  drunkard  asleep  once  more."      engineer  or  "  strik- 
er "  on  a  steamboat. 
This  thing  shook  the  bottom  out  of  all  my  Sunday-school 
teachings.     That  boy  had  been  notoriously  worldly,  and    I 
just  the  reverse ;  yet  he  was  exalted  to  this  eminence,  and  I 
left  in  obscurity  and  misery.     There  was  nothing  generous 
about  this  fellow  in  his  greatness.     He  would  always  man- 
age to  have  a  rusty  bolt  to  scrub  while  his  boat  tarried  at 
our  town,  and  he  would  sit  on  the  inside  guard  and  scrub 


A   CUB  ENGINEER.  67 

it,  where  we  could  all  see  him  and  envy  him  and  loathe 
him.  And  whenever  his  boat  was  laid  up  he  would  come 
home  and  swell  around  the  town  in  his  blackest  and  greas- 
iest clothes,  so  that  nobody  could  help  remembering  that 
he  was  a  steamboatman ;  and  he  used  all  sorts  of  steam- 
boat technicalities  in  his  talk,  as  if  he  were  so  used  to 
them  that  he  forgot  common  people  could  not  understand 
them.  He  would  speak  of  the  "  labboard  "  side  of  a  horse 
in  an  easy,  natural  way  that  would  make  one  wish  he 
was  dead.  And  he  was  always  talking  about  u  St.  Looy  " 
like  an  old  citizen  ;  he  would  refer  casually  to  occasions 
when  he  "  was  coming  down  Fourth  Street,"  or  when  he  was 
"  passing  by  the  Planter's  House,"  or  when  there  was  a  fire 
and  he  took  a  turn  on  the  brakes  of  "the  old  Big  Missouri;" 
and  then  he  would  go  on  and  lie  about  how  many  towns  the 
size  of  ours  were  burned  down  there  that  day.  Two  or  three 
of  the  boys  had  long  been  persons  of  consideration  among 
us  because  they  had  been  to  St.  Louis  once  and  had  a  vague 
general  knowledge  of  its  wonders,  but  the  day  of  their  glory 
was  over  now.  They  lapsed  into  a  humble  silence,  and 
learned  to  disappear  when  the  ruthless  "  cub "  -  engineer 
approached.  This  fellow  had  money,  too,  and  hair  oil. 
Also  an  ignorant  silver  watch  and  a  showy  brass  watch 
chain.  He  wore  a  leather  belt  and  used  no  suspenders.  If 
ever  a  youth  was  cordially  admired  and  hated  by  his  com- 
rades, this  one  was.  No  girl  could  withstand  his  charms. 
He  "  cut  out "  every  boy  in  the  village.  When  his  boat  blew 
up  at  last,  it  diffused  a  tranquil  contentment  among  us  such 
as  we  had  not  known  for  months.  But  when  he  came  home 
the  next  week,  alive,  renowned,  and  appeared  in  church 
all  battered  up  and  bandaged,  a  shining  hero,  stained  at  and 
wondered  over  by  everybody,  it  seemed  to  us  that  the  par- 
tiality of  Providence  for  an  undeserving  reptile  had  reached 
a  point  where  it  was  open  to  criticism. 

This  creature's  career  could  produce  but  one  result,  and  it 
speedily  followed.     Boy  after  boy  managed   to  get  on  the 


68 


THE   STEAMBOAT   FEVEE. 


river.  The  minister's  son  became  an  engineer.  The  doctor's 
and  the  post-master's  sons  became  "  mud  clerks ; "  the 
wholesale  liquor  dealer's  son  became  a  bar-keeper  on  a  boat ; 

four  sons  of  the 
chief  merchant, 
and  two  sons  of 
the  county  judge, 
became  pilots. 
Pilot  was  the 
grandest  position 
of  all.  The  pilot, 
even  in  those 
days  of  trivial 
wages,  had  a 
princely  salary  — 
from  a  hundred 
and  fifty  to  two 
hundred  and  fifty 
dollars  a  month, 
and  no  board  to 
pay.  Two  months 
of  his  wages 
would  pay  a 
preacher's  salary 
for  a  year.  Now 
some  of  us  were 
left  disconsolate. 
We  could  not  get 
on  the  river  —  at 
least  our  parents 
would  not  let  us. 
So  by  and  by  I 
I  said  I  never  would  come  home  again  till  T  was 
a  pilot  and  could  come  in  glory.  But  somehow  I  could  not 
manage  it.  I  went  meekly  aboard  a  few  of  the  boats  that 
lay   packed   together   like    sardines   at   the  long  St.  Louis 


A  SHINIXfi    hetco. 


ran  away. 


A    RUNAWAY. 


69 


wharf,  and  very  humbly  inquired  for  the  pilots,  but  got  only 
a  cold  shoulder  and  short  words  from  mates  and  clerks. 
1  had  to  make  the  best  of  this  sort  of  treatment  for  the 
time  being,  but  I  had  comforting  day-dreams  of  a  future 
when  I  should  be  a  great  and  honored  pilot,  with  plenty  of 
money,  and  could  kill  some  of  these  mates  and  clerks  and 
pay  for  them. 


CHAPTER   V. 

I   WANT   TO   BE   A   CUB-PILOT. 

MONTHS  afterward  the  hope  within  me  struggled  to 
a  reluctant  death,  and  I  found  myself  without  an 
ambition.  But  I  was  ashamed  to  go  home.  I  was  in  Cincin- 
nati, and  I  set  to  work  to  map  out  a  new  career.  I  had  been 
reading  about  the  recent  exploration  of  the  river  Amazon  by 
an  expedition  sent  out  by  our  government.  It  was  said  that 
the  expedition,  owing  to  difficulties,  had  not  thoroughly 
explored  a  part  of  the  country  lying  about  the  head-waters, 
some  four  thousand  miles  from  the  mouth  of  the  river.  It 
was  only  about  fifteen  hundred  miles  from  Cincinnati  to  New 
Orleans,  where  I  could  doubtless  get  a  ship.  I  had  thirty 
dollars  left ;  I  would  go  and  complete  the  exploration  of  the 
Amazon.  This  was  all  the  thought  I  gave  to  the  subject.  I 
never  was  great  in  matters  of  detail.  I  packed  my  valise, 
and  took  passage  on  an  ancient  tub  called  the  "  Paul  Jones," 
for  New  Orleans.  For  the  sum  of  sixteen  dollars  I  had  the 
scarred  and  tarnished  splendors  of  "  her  "  main  saloon  prin- 
cipally to  myself,  for  she  was  not  a  creature  to  attract  the  eye 
of  wiser  travellers. 

When  we  presently  got  under  way  and  went  poking  down 
the  broad  Ohio,  I  became  a  new  being,  and  the  subject  of  my 
own  admiration.  I  was  a  traveller  !  A  word  never  had  tasted 
so  good  in  my  mouth  before.  I  had  an  exultant  sense  of 
being  bound  for  mysterious  lands  and  distant  climes  which 
I  never  have  felt  in  so  uplifting  a  degree  since.  I  was  in  such 
a  glorified  condition  that  all  ignoble  feelings  departed  out  of 


A  MIGHTY   TRAVELLER. 


71 


f- 


me,  and  I  was  able  to  look  down  and  pity  the  untravelled  with 

a  compassion  that  had  hardly  a  trace  of  contempt  in  it.    Still, 

when  we  stopped  at  villages  and   wood-yards,  I  could  not 

help  lolling  carelessly  upon  the  railings  of  the  boiler  deck  to 

enjoy  the  envy  of  the  country  boys 

on  the  bank.     If  they  did  not  seem 

to  discover  me,  I  presently  sneezed 

to  attract  their  attention,  or  moved 

to  a  position  where  they  could  not 

help  seeing  me.     And  as  soon  as  I 

knew  they  saw  me  I 

gaped  and  stretch-  / 

ed,  and  gave  oth- 
er signs  of  being 
mightily  bored 
with  travelling. 

I  kept  my  hat 
off  all  the  time, 
and  stayed  where 
the  wind  and  the 
sun  could  strike 
me,  because  I 
wanted  to  get  the 
bronzed  and  wea- 
ther-beaten look  of 
an  old  traveller. 
Before  the  second 
day  was  half  gone, 
I  experienced  a  joy 

which  filled  me  with  the  purest  gratitude  ;  for  I  saw  that  the 
skin  had  begun  to  blister  and  peel  off  my  face  and  neck. 
I  wished  that  the  boys  and  girls  at  home  could  see  me 
now. 

We  reached  Louisville  in  time  —  at  least  the  neighborhood 
of  it.  We  stuck  hard  and  fast  on  the  rocks  in  the  middle  of 
the  river,  and  lay  there  four  days.     I  was  now  beginning  to 


BORED   WITH   TRAVELLING. 


72  THE   MATE   ASTOUNDED. 

feel  a  strong  sense  of  being  a  part  of  the  boat's  family,  a  sort 
of  infant  son  to  the  captain  and  younger  brother  to  the 
officers.  There  is  no  estimating  the  pride  I  took  in  this 
grandeur,  or  the  affection  that  began  to  swell  and  grow  in  me 
for  those  people.  I  could  not  know  how  the  lordly  steamboat- 
man  scorns  that  sort  of  presumption  in  a  mere  landsman.. 
I  particularly  longed  to  acquire  the  least  trifle  of  notice  from 
the  big  stormy  mate,  and  I  was  on  the  alert  for  an  oppor- 
tunity to  do  him  a  service  to  that  end.  It  came  at  last. 
The  riotous  powwow  of  setting  a  spar  was  going  on  down 
on  the  forecastle,  and  I  went  down  there  and  stood  around 
in  the  way  —  or  mostly  skipping  out  of  it  —  till  the  mate 
suddenly  roared  a  general  order  for  somebody  to  bring  him 
a  capstan  bar.  I  sprang  to  his  side  and  said :  "  Tell  me 
where  it  is— I '11  fetch  it!" 

If  a  rag-picker  had  offered  to  do  a  diplomatic  service  for 
the  Emperor  of  Russia,  the  monarch  could  not  have  been 
more  astounded  than  the  mate  was.  He  even  stopped 
swearing.  He  stood  and  stared  down  at  me.  It  took  him 
ten  seconds  to  scrape  his  disjointed  remains  together  again. 
Then  he  said  impressively  :  "  Well,  if  this  don't  beat  hell !  " 
and  turned  to  his  work  with  the  air  of  a  man  who  had  been 
confronted  with  a  problem  too  abstruse  for  solution. 

I  crept  away,  and  courted  solitude  for  the  rest  of  the  day. 
I  did  not  go  to  dinner  ;  I  stayed  away  from  supper  until 
everybody  else  had  finished.  I  did  not  feel  so  much  like  a 
member  of  the  boat's  family  now  as  before.  However,  my 
spirits  returned,  in  instalments,  as  we  pursued  our  way  down 
the  river.  I  was  sorry  I  *hated  the  mate  so,  because  it  was 
not  in  (young)  human  nature  not  to  admire  him.  He  was 
huge  and  muscular,  his  face  was  bearded  and  whiskered  all 
over ;  he  had  a  red  woman  and  a  blue  woman  tattooed  on 
his  right  arm, — one  on  each  side  of  a  blue  anchor  with 
a  red  rope  to  it;  and  in  the  matter  of  profanity  he  was 
sublime.  When  lie  was  getting  out  cargo  at  a  landing,  I 
was   always  where  I  could  see  and   hear.     He  felt  all  the 


"tell  me  where  it  is  —  i'll  fetch  it!" 


SUBLIME   PROFANITY. 


75 


majesty  of  his  great  position,  and  made  the  world  feel  it,  too. 
When  he  gave  even  the  simplest  order,  he  discharged  it  like 
a  blast  of  lightning,  and  sent  a  long,  reverberating  peal  of 
profanity  thundering  after  it.  I  could  not  help  contrasting 
the  way  in  which  the  average 
landsman  would  give  an  order, 
with  the  mate's  way  of  doing  it. 


SUBLIME    IS   PROFANITY. 


If  the  landsman  should  wish  the  gang-plank  moved  a  foot 
farther  forward,  he  would  probaoly  say :  "  James,  or  Wil- 
liam, one  of  you  push  that  plank  forward,  please  : "  but  put 
the  mate  in  his  place,  and  he  would  roar  out :  "  Here,  now, 
start  that  gang-plank  for'ard  !  Lively,  now  !  What  're  you 
about !     Snatch  it !  snatch  it !     There !   there  !     Aft  again  ! 


76  A   NEW  FRIEND. 

aft  again  !  Don't  you  hear  me  ?  Dash  it  to  dash  !  are  you 
going  to  sleep  over  it !  '  Vast  heaving.  'Vast  heaving,  I  tell 
you  !  Going  to  heave  it  clear  astern  ?  WHERE  're  you 
going  with  that  barrel !  forard  with  it  'fore  I  make  you  swal- 
low it,  you  dash-dash-dash-c?a.s/jed!  split  between  a  tired  mud- 
turtle  and  a  crippled  hearse-horse  !  " 

I  wished  I  could  talk  like  that. 

When  the  soreness  of  my  adventure  with  the  mate  had 
somewhat  worn  off,  I  began  timidly  to  make  up  to  the  hum- 
blest official  connected  with  the  boat  —  the  night  watchman. 
He  snubbed  my  advances  at  first,  but  I  presently  ventured 
to  offer  him  a  new  chalk  pipe,  and  that  softened  him.  So 
he  allowed  me  to  sit  with  him  by  the  big  bell  on  the  hurri- 
cane deck,  and  in  time  he  melted  into  conversation.  He 
could  not  well  have  helped  it,  I  hung  with  such  homage  on 
his  words  and  so  plainly  showed  that  I  felt  honored  by  his 
notice.  He  told  me  the  names  of  dim  capes  and  shadowy 
islands  as  we  glided  by  them  in  the  solemnity  of  the  night, 
under  the  winking  stars,  and  by  and  by  got  to  talking  about 
himself.  He  seemed  over-sentimental  for  a  man  whose  salary 
was  six.  dollars  a  week  —  or  rather  he  might  have  seemed  so 
to  an  older  person  than  I.  But  I  drank  in  his  words  hun- 
grily, and  with  a  faith  that  might  have  moved  mountains  if 
it  had  been  applied  judiciously.  What  was  it  to  me  that  he 
was  soiled  and  seedy  and  fragrant  with  gin  ?  What  was  it 
to  me  that  his  grammar  was  bad,  his  construction  worse, 
and  his  profanity  so  void  of  art  that  it  was  an  element  of 
'weakness  rather  than  strength  in  his  conversation?  He  was 
a  wronged  man,  a  man  who  had  seen  trouble,  and  that  was 
enough  for  me.  As  he  mellowed  into  his  plaintive  history 
his  tears  dripped  upon  the  lantern  in  his  lap,  and  1  cried, 
too,  from  sympathy.  He  said  he  was  the  son  of  an  English 
nobleman  —  either  an  earl  or  an  alderman,  he  could  not  re- 
member which,  but  believed  was  both  ;  his  father,  the  noble- 
man, loved  him,  but  his  mother  hated  him  from  the  cradle  ; 
and  so  while  he  was  still  a  little  boy  he  was  sent  to  "  one  of 


A   SCION   OF  NOBILITY. 


77 


them  old,  ancient  colleges" — he  couldn't  remember  which  ; 
and  by  and  by  his  father  died  and  his  mother  seized  the 
property  and  "  shook "  him,  as  he  phrased  it.  After  his 
mother     shook     him,  members  of  the 

nobility  with  whom  he  (  was  acquainted 

used  their  influence  to 
position 


"HIS   TEA.RS   DRIPPED   UPON   THE    LANTERN." 


lolly-boy  in  a  ship ; "  and  from  that  point  my  watchman 
threw  off  all  trammels  of  date  and  locality  and  branched  out 
into  a  narrative  that  bristled  all  along  with  incredible  adven- 
tures ;  a  narrative  that  was  so  reeking  with  bloodshed  and  so 
crammed  with  hair-breadth  escapes  and  the  most  engaging 
and  unconscious  personal  villanies,  that  I  sat  speechless, 
enjoying,  shuddering,  wondering,  worshipping. 


78 


SADLY   UNDECEIVED. 


It  was  a  sore  blight  to  find  out  afterwards  that  he  was  a 
low,  vulgar,  ignorant,  sentimental,  half-witted  humbug,  an 
untravelled  native  of  the  wilds  of  Illinois,  who  had  absorbed 
wildcat  literature  and  appropriated  its  marvels,  until  in  time 
he  had  woven  odds  and  ends  of  the  mess  into  this  yarn,  and 
then  gone  on  telling  it  to  fledglings  like  me,  until  he  had 
come  to  believe  it  himself. 


I 


CHAPTER   VI. 

A   CUB-PILOT'S   EXPERIENCE. 

WHAT  with  lying  on  the  rocks  four  days  at  Louisville, 
and  some  other  delays,  the  poor  old  "  Paul  Jones  " 
fooled  away  about  two  weeks  in  making  the  voyage  from 
Cincinnati  to  New  Orleans.  This  gave  me  a  chance  to  get 
acquainted  with  one  of  the  pilots,  and  he  taught  me  how  to 
steer  the  boat,  and  thus  made  the  fascination  of  river  life 
more  potent  than  ever  for  me. 

It  also  gave  me  a  chance  to  get  acquainted  writh  a  youth 
who  had  taken  deck  passage  —  more  's  the  pity  ;  for  he 
easily  borrowed  six  dollars  of  me  on  a  promise  to  return  to 
the  boat  and  pay  it  back  to  me  the  day  after  we  should 
arrive.  But  he  probably  died  or  forgot,  for  he  never  came.  It 
was  doubtless  the  former,  since  he  had  said  his  parents  were 
wealthy,  and  he  only  travelled  deck  passage  because  it  was 
cooler.1 

I  soon  discovered  two  things.  One  was  that  a  vessel  would 
not  be  likely  to  sail  for  the  mouth  of  the  Amazon  under  ten 
or  twelve  years ;  and  the  other  was  that  the  nine  or  ten 
dollars  still  left  in  my  pocket  would  not  suffice  for  so  impos- 
ing an  exploration  as  I  had  planned,  even  if  I  could  afford 
to  wait  for  a  ship.  Therefore  it  followed  that  I  must  con- 
trive a  new  career.  The  "  Paul  Jones  "  was  now  bound  for 
St.  Louis.  I  planned  a  siege  against  my  pilot,  and  at  the  end 
of  three  hard  days  he  surrendered.  He  agreed  to  teach  me 
the  Mississippi  River  from  New  Orleans  to  St.  Louis  for  five 

1  "  Deck  "  passage  —  i.  e.,  steerage  passage. 


80 


BESIEGING   THE   PILOT. 


hundred  dollars,  payable  out  of  the  first  wages  I  should 
receive  after  graduating.  I  entered  upon  the  small  enter- 
prise of  "  learning"  twelve  or  thirteen  hundred  miles  of  the 
great  Mississippi  River  with  the  easy  confidence  of  my  time 


of  life.  If  I  had 
what  I  was  about 
faculties,  I  should 


really  known 
to  require  of  my 
not  have  had 
the  courage  to 
begin.  I  sup- 
posed that  all 
a  pilot  had  to 
do  was  to  keep 
his  boat  in  the 
river,  and  I  did 
not  consider 
that  that  could 
be  much  of  a 
trick,  since  it 
was  so  wide. 

The  boat 
backed  out 
from  New  Or- 
leans at  four 
in  the  after- 
noon, and  it 
w as  "  o u r 
watch "  until 
eight.  Mr. 
Bixby ,  my  chief, "  straight- 
ened her  up,"  plowed  her 
along  past  the  sterns  of 
the  other  boats  that  lay  at 
the  Levee,  and  then  said,  "  Here,  take  her ;  shave  those 
steamships  as  close  as  you  'd  peej  an  apple."  I  took  the 
wheel,  and  my  heart-beat  fluttered  up  into  the  hundreds ; 
for  it  seemed  to  me  that  we  were  about  to  scrape  the  side 


HE   EASILY  BORROWED   SIX   DOLLARS. 


i 


CLOSE  SHAVING. 


81 


off  every  ship  in  the  line,  we  were  so  close.  I  held  my 
breath  and  began  to  claw  the  boat  away  from  the  danger  ; 
and  I  had  my  own  opinion  of  the  pilot  who  had  known  no 
better  than  to  get  us  into  such  peril,  but  I  was  too  wise 
to  express  it.  In  half  a  minute  I  had  a  wide  margin  of 
safety  intervening  between  the  "  Paul  Jones  "  and  the  ships ; 
and  within  ten  seconds  more  I  was  set  aside  in  disgrace, 
and  Mr.  Bixby  was  going  into  danger  again  and  flaying  me 
alive  with  abuse 
of  my  cowardice. 
I  was  stung,  but 
I  was  obliged  to 
admire  the  easy 
confidence  with 
which  my  chief 
loafed  from  side 
to  side  of  his 
wheel,  and 
trimmed  the 
ships  so  closely 
that  disaster 
seemed  cease- 
lessly imminent. 
When  he  had 
cooled  a  little  he 
told  me  that  the 
easy    water    was 

close  ashore  and  the  current  outside,  and  therefore  we 
must  hug  the  bank,  up-stream,  to  get  the  benefit  of  the 
former,  and  stay  well  out,  down-stream,  to  take  advantage 
of  the  latter.  In  my  own  mind  I  resolved  to  be  a  down- 
stream pilot  and  leave  the  up-streaming  to  people  dead  to 
prudence. 

Now  and  then  Mr.  Bixby  called  my  attention  to  certain 
things.  Said  he,  "  This  is  Six-Mile  Point."  I  assented.  It 
was  pleasant  enough  information,  but  I  could  not  see  the 

6 


BESIEGING  THE    PILOT. 


82 


NINE-MILE  POINT. 


bearing  of  it.  I  was  not  conscious  that  it  was  a  matter  of 
any  interest  to  me.  Another  time  he  said,  "  This  is  Nine- 
Mile  Point."  Later  he  said,  "  This  is  Twelve-Mile  Point." 
They  were  all  about  level  with  the  water's  edge;  they  all 
looked  about  alike  to  me  ;  they  were  monotonously  unpic- 
turesque.      I  hoped  Mr.   Bixby  would  change   the  subject. 

But    no ;    he    would 
crowd  up  around  a 
point,  hugging  the 
shore  with  affec- 
tion, and  then 


THIS    IS   NINE-MILE 
POINT." 


say  :  "  The 

slack  water 

ends    here, 

abreast  this 

bunch    of 

China-trees  ;  now  we  cross  over." 

So  he  crossed  over.    He  gave  me 

the  wheel  once  or  twice,  but  I  had  no  luck.     I  either  came 

near  chipping  off  the  edge  of  a  sugar  plantation,  or  I  yawed 

too  far  from  shore,  and  so  dropped  back  into  disgrace  again 

and  got  abused. 

The  watch  was  ended  at  last,  and  we  took  supper  and  went 
to  bed.  At  midnight  the  glare  of  a  lantern  shone  in  my 
eyes,  and  the  night  watchman  said  :  — 


DON'T   BOTHER  ME. 


83 


"  Come  !  turn  out !  " 

And  then  he  left.  I  could  not  understand  this  extraordi- 
nary procedure ;  so  I  presently  gave  up  trying  to,  and  dozed 
off  to  sleep.  Pretty  soon  the  watchman  was  back  again,  and 
this  time  he  was  gruff.     I  was  annoyed.     I  said :  — 

"  What  do  you  want  to  come 


" COME  !    TURN   OUT ! 


bothering  around  here  in  the  middle 
of  the  night  for  ?  Now  as  like  as  not  I  '11  not  get  to  sleep 
again  to-night." 

The  watchman  said  :  — 

"  Well,  if  this  an't  good,  I  'm  blest." 

The  "  off-watch  "  was  just  turning  in,  and  I  heard  some 
brutal  laughter  from  them,  and  such  remarks  as  "  Hello, 
watchman!  an't  the  new  cub  turned  out  }^et?  He's  deli- 
cate, likely.  Give  him  some  sugar  in  a  rag  and  send  for 
the  chambermaid  to  sing  rock-a-by-baby  to  him." 

About  this  time  Mr.  Bixby  appeared  on  the  scene.  Some- 
thing like  a  minute  later  I  was  climbing  the  pilot-house 
steps  with  some  of  my  clothes  on  and  the  rest  in  my  arms. 
Mr.  Bixby  was  close  behind,  commenting.     Here  was  some- 


84 


A  NIGHT  WATCH. 


thing  fresh  —  this  thing  of  getting  up  in  the  middle  of  the 
night  to  go  to  work.  It  was  a  detail  in  piloting  that  had 
never  occurred  to  me  at  all.     I  knew  that  boats  ran  all 

night,  but  somehow  I  had 
never  happened  to  reflect 
that  somebody  had  to  get 
up  out  of  a  warm  bed  to 
run  them.  I  began  to  fear 
that  piloting  was  not  quite 
so  romantic  as  I  had  imag- 
ined it  was ;  there  was 
something  very  real  and 
work-like  about  this  new 
phase  of  it. 

It  was  a  rather  dingy 
night,  although  a  fair 
number  of  stars  were  out. 
The  big  mate  was  at  the 
wheel,  and  he  had  the  old 
tub  pointed  at  a  star  and 
was  holding  her  straight 
up  the  middle  of  the  river. 
The  shores  on  either  hand 
were  not  much  more  than 
half  a  mile  apart,  but  they 
seemed  wonderfully  far 
away  and  ever  so  vague 
and  indistinct.  The  mate 
said :  — 

"  We  've  got  to  land  at 
Jones's  plantation,  sir." 

The  vengeful   spirit  in 

me    exulted.      I    said    to 

myself,  I  wish  you  joy  of  your  job,  Mr.  Bixby ;  you  '11  have 

a  good  time  finding  Mr.  Jones's  plantation  such  a  night  as 

this ;  and  I  hope  you  never  will  find  it  as  long  as  you  live. 


■d  m 


"a  minute  later.' 


JONES'S  PLANTATION.  85 

Mr.  Bixby  said  to  the  mate  :  — 

"  Upper  end  of  the  plantation,  or  the  lower  ?  " 

"  Upper." 

"  I  can't  do  it.  The  stumps  there  are  out  of  water  at  this 
stage.  It 's  no  great  distance  to  the  lower,  and  you  '11  have 
to  get  along  with  that." 

"All  right,  sir.  If  Jones  don't  like  it  he  '11  have  to  lump 
it,  I  reckon." 

And  then  the  mate  left.  My  exultation  began  to  cool 
and  my  wonder  to  come  up.  Here  was  a  man  who  not  only 
proposed  to  find  this  plantation  on  such  a  night,  but  to  find 
either  end  of  it  you  preferred.  I  dreadfully  wanted  to  ask 
a  question,  but  I  was  carrying  about  as  many  short  answers 
as  my  cargo-room  would  admit  of,  so  I  held  my  peace. 
All  I  desired  to  ask  Mr.  Bixby  was  the  simple  question 
whether  he  was  ass  enough  to  really  imagine  he  was  going 
to  find  that  plantation  on  a  night  when  all  plantations  were 
exactly  alike  and  all  the  same  color.  But  I  held  in.  I 
used  to  have  fine  inspirations  of  prudence  in  those  days. 

Mr.  Bixby  made  for  the  shore  and  soon  was  scraping  it, 
just  the  same  as  if  it  had  been  daylight.  And  not  only  that, 
but  singing  — 

"Father  in  heaven,  the  day  is  declining,"  etc. 

It  seemed  to  me  that  I  had  put  my  life  in  the  keeping  of  a 
peculiarly  reckless  outcast.  Presently  he  turned  on  me  and 
said :  — 

"What's  the  name  of  the  first  point  above  New  Orleans?" 

I  was  gratified  to  be  able  to  answer  promptly,  and  I  did. 
I  said  I  did  n't  know. 

"  Don't  know  t " 

This  manner  jolted  me.  I  was  down  at  the  foot  again,  in 
a  moment.     But  I  had  to  say  just  what  I  had  said  before. 

"  Well,  you  're  a  smart  one,"  said  Mr.  Bixby.  "  What 's 
the  name  of  the  next  point  ?  " 

Once  more  I  did  n't  know. 


86 


THE   CATECHISM. 


"  Well,  this  beats  anything.  Tell  me  the  name  of  any 
point  or  place  1  told  you." 

I  studied  a  while  and  decided  that  I  could  n't. 

"  Look  here  !  What  do  you  start  out  from,  above  Twelve- 
Mile  Point,  to  cross  over  ? " 

"I  — I— don't  know." 

"You— you  —  don't  know?"  mimicking  my  drawling  maii- 


"  YOU  'RE    A   SMART   ONE." 

ner  of  speech.  What  do  you  know  ?" 
"I  —  I  —  nothing,  for  certain." 
"By  the  great  Caesar's  ghost,  I  believe  you!  You're 
the  stupidest  dunderhead  I  ever  saw  or  ever  heard  of,  so 
help  me  Moses!  The  idea  of  ynu  being  a  pilot  —  you! 
Why,  you  don't  know  enough  to  pilot  a  cow  down  a 
lane." 

Oh,  but  his  wrath  was  up  !     He  was  a  nervous  man,  and 
he  shuffled  from  one  side  of  his  wheel  to  the  other  as  if  the 


THEY  TALK  BACK. 


87 


floor  was  hot.     He  would  boil  a  while  to  himself,  and  then 
overflow  and  scald  me  again. 

"  Look  here  !     What  do  you  suppose  I  told  you  the  names 
of  those  points  for  ?  " 

I  tremblingly  considered  a  moment,  and  then  the  devil  of 
temptation  provoked  me  to  say :  — 

"  Well  —  to  —  to  —  be  entertaining,  I  thought." 

This  was  a  red  rag  to  the  bull.     He  raged  and  stormed  so 
(he  was  crossing  the  river  at  the  time)  that  I  judge  it  made 
him  blind,  because  he  ran  over  the  steering-oar  of  a  trading- 
scow.      Of    course    the 
traders  sent  up  a  volley 
of      red-hot     profanity. 
Never     was     a 
man  so  grateful 
as     Mr.    Bixby 
was :  because  he 
was    brim    full, 
and    here   were 
subjects   who 
would  talk  back. 
He  threw  open 
a  window,  thrust 
his     head     out, 
and  such  an  ir- 
ruption followed 
as  I  never  had  heard  before, 
the  scowmen's  curses  drifted, 


GET   A   MEMORANDUM 
BOOK." 


The  fainter  and  farther  away 
the  higher  Mr.  Bixby  lifted 
his  voice  and  the  weightier  his  adjectives  grew.  When  he- 
closed  the  window  he  was  empty.  You  could  have  drawn  a 
seine  through  his  system  and  not  caught  curses  enough  to 
disturb  your  mother  with.  Presently  he  said  to  me  in  the 
gentlest  way :  — 

"  My  boy,  you  must  get  a  little  memorandum-book,  and 
every  time  I  tell  you  a  thing,  put  it  down  right  away. 
There 's  only  one  way  to  be  a  pilot,  and  that  is  to  get  this 


88  A   TOUGH  ALPHABET. 

entire  river  by  heart.  You  have  to  know  it  just  like 
A  B  C." 

That  was  a  dismal  revelation  to  me  ;  for  my  memory  was 
never  loaded  witli  anything  but  blank  cartridges.  However, 
I  did  not  feel  discouraged  long.  I  judged  that  it  was  best  to 
make  some  allowances,  for  doubtless  Mr.  Bixby  was  "  stretch- 
ing." Presently  he  pulled  a  rope  and  struck  a  few  strokes 
on  the  big  bell.  The  stars  were  all  gone  now,  and  the  night 
was  as  black  as  ink.  I  could  hear  the  wheels  churn  along 
the  bank,  but  I  was  not  entirely  certain  that  I  could  see  the 
shore.  The  voice  of  the  invisible  watchman  called  up  from 
the  hurricane  deck  :  — 

" What 's  this,  sir?" 

"  Jones's  plantation." 

I  said  to  myself,  I  wish  I  might  venture  to  offer  a  small 
bet  that  it  is  n't.  But  I  did  not  chirp.  I  only  waited  to  see. 
Mr.  Bixby  handled  the  engine  bells,  and  in  due  time  the 
boat's  nose  came  to  the  land,  a  torch  glowed  from  the  fore- 
castle, a  man  skipped  ashore,  a  darky's  voice  on  the  bank 
said,  "  Gimme  de  k'yarpet-bag,  Mars'  Jones,"  and  the  next 
moment  we  were  standing  up  the  river  again,  all  serene. 
I  reflected  deeply  a  while,  and  then  said,  —  but  not  aloud, 
—  Well,  the  finding  of  that  plantation  was  the  luckiest 
accident  that  ever  happened ;  but  it  could  n't  happen  again 
in  a  hundred  years.  And  I  fully  believed  it  was  an  acci- 
dent, too. 

By  the  time  we  had  gone  seven  or  eight  hundred  miles  up 
the  river,  I  had  learned  to  be  a  tolerably  plucky  upstream 
steersman,  in  daylight,  and  before  we  reached  St.  Louis  I 
had  made  a  trifle  of  progress  in  night-work,  but  only  a  trifle. 
I  had  a  note-book  that  fairly  bristled  with  the  names  of 
towns,  "  points,"  bars,  islands,  bends,  reaches,  etc. ;  but  the 
information  was  to  be  found  only  in  the  note-book  —  none 
of  it  was  in  my  head.  It  made  my  heart  ache  to  think  I 
had  only  got  half  of  the  river  set  down ;  for  as  our  watch 
was  four  hours  off  and  four  hours  on,  day  and  night,  there 


MY  NEXT   TRIP. 


89 


was  a  long  four-hour  gap  in  my  book  for  every  time  I  had 
slept  since  the  voyage  began. 

My  chief  was  presently  hired  to  go  on  a  big  New  Orleans 


boat, 

and  I 

packed 

my  satchel 

and  went   with  him.      She 

was  a  grand  affair.     When  I  stood 

in   her  pilot-house   I   was    so  far 

above   the  water    that   I    seemed 

perched  on  a  mountain ;  and  her 

decks  stretched   so  far  away,  fore 

and  aft,  below  me,  that  T  wondered 

how  I  could  ever  have  considered  the  little  "Paul  Jones"  a 

large  craft.     There  were  other  differences,  too.     The  "  Paul 

Jones's"  pilot-house  was  a  cheap,  dingy,  battered  rattle-trap, 


A   SUMPTUOUS   TEMPLE. 


90  PALATIAL  QUARTERS. 

cramped  for  room:  but  here  was  a  sumptuous  glass  temple  ; 
room  enough  to  have  a  dance  in  ;  showy  red  and  gold  window- 
curtains  ;  an  imposing  sofa  ;  leather  cushions  and  a  back  to 
the  high  bench  where  visiting  pilots  sit,  to  spin  yarns  and 
"  look  at  the  river  ;  "  bright,  fanciful  "  cuspadores  "  instead 
of  a  broad  wooden  box  filled  with  sawdust ;  nice  new  oil- 
cloth on  the  floor ;  a  hospitable  big  stove  for  winter  ;  a  wheel 
as  high  as  my  head,  costly  with  inlaid  work ;  a  wire  tiller- 
rope;  bright  brass  knobs  for  the  bells;  and  a  tidy,  white- 
aproned,  black  "  texas-tender,"  to  bring  up  tarts  and  ices  and 
coffee  during  mid-watch,  day  and  night.  Now  this  was  "  some- 
thing like ; "  and  so  I  began  to  take  heart  once  more  to 
believe  that  piloting  was  a  romantic  sort  of  occupation  after 
all.  The  moment  we  were  under  way  1  began  to  prowl 
about  the  great  steamer  and  fill  myself  with  joy.  She  was 
as  clean  and  as  dainty  as  a  drawing-room ;  when  I  looked 
down  her  long,  gilded  saloon,  it  was  like  gazing  through  a 
splendid  tunnel ;  she  had  an  oil-picture,  by  some  gifted  sign- 
painter,  on  every  state-room  door  ;  she  glittered  with  no  end 
of  prism-fringed  chandeliers ;  the  clerk's  office  was  elegant, 
the  bar  was  marvellous,  and  the  bar-keeper  had  been  bar- 
bered  and  upholstered  at  incredible  cost.  The  boiler  deck 
(i.e.,  the  second  story  of  the  boat,  so  to  speak),  was  as  spa- 
cious as  a  church,  it  seemed  to  me  ;  so  with  the  forecastle  ; 
and  there  was  no  pitiful  handful  of  deck-hands,  firemen,  and 
roust-abouts  down  there,  but  a  whole  battalion  of  men.  The 
fires  were  fiercely  glaring  from  a  long  row  of  furnaces,  and 
over  them  were  eight  huge  boilers !  This  was  unutterable 
pomp.  The  mighty  engines — but  enough  of  this.  I  had 
never  felt  so  fine  before.  And  when  1  found  that  the  regi- 
ment of  natty  servants  respectfully  "  sir'd  "  me,  my  satisfac- 
tion was  complete. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

A  DARING  DEED. 

WHEN  I  returned  to  the  pilot-house  St.  Louis  was  gone 
and  I  was  lost.  Here  was  a  piece  of  river  which  was 
all  down  in  my  book,  but  I  could  make  neither  head  nor  tail 
of  it  :  you  understand,  it  was  turned  around.  I  had  seen  it 
when  coming  up-stream,  but  I  had  never  faced  about  to  see 
how  it  looked  when  it  was  behind  me.  My  heart  broke 
again,  for  it  was  plain  that  I  had  got  to  learn  this  trouble- 
some river  both  ways. 

The  pilot-house  was  full  of  pilots,  going  down  to  "  look  at 
the  river."  What  is  called  the  "  upper  river "  (the  two 
hundred  miles  between  St.  Louis  and  Cairo,  where  the  Ohio 
comes  in)  was  low ;  and  the  Mississippi  changes  its  channel 
so  constantly  that  the  pilots  used  to  always  find  it  necessary 
to  run  down  to  Cairo  to  take  a  fresh  look,  when  their  boats 
were  to  lie  in  port  a  week  ;  that  is,  when  the  water  was  at  a 
low  stage.  A  deal  of  this  "  looking  at  the  river  "  was  done 
by  poor  fellows  who  seldom  had  a  berth,  and  whose  only 
hope  of  getting  one  lay  in  their  being  always  freshly  posted 
and  therefore  ready  to  drop  into  the  shoes  of  some  reputable 
pilot,  for  a  single  trip,  on  account  of  such  pilot's  sudden 
illness,  or  some  other  necessity.  And  a  good  many  of  them 
constantly  ran  up  and  down  inspecting  the  river,  not  because 
they  ever  really  hoped  to  get  a  berth,  but  because  (they 
being  guests  of  the  boat)  it  was  cheaper  to  "  look  at  the 
river"  than  stay  ashore  and  pay  board.  In  time  these 
fellows  grew  dainty  in  their  tastes,  and  only  infested  boats 
that  had  an  established  reputation  for  setting  good  tables. 


92 


RIVER  INSPECTORS. 


All  visiting  pilots  were  useful,  for  they  were  always  ready 
and  willing,  winter  or  summer,  night  or  day,  to  go  out  in  the 
yawl  and  help  buoy  the  channel  or  assist  the  boat's  pilots 
in    any    way    they    could.      They    were    likewise    welcome 


"  RIVER   INSPECTORS." 

because  all  pilots  are  tireless  talk- 
ers, when  gathered  together,  and 
as  they  talk  only  about  the  river 
they  are  always  understood  and  are  always  interesting.  Your 
true  pilot  cares  nothing  about  anything  on  earth  but  the  river, 
and  his  pride  in  his  occupation  surpasses  the  pride  of  kings. 

We  had  a  fine  company  of  these  river-inspeefcors  along, 
this  trip.  There  were  eight  or  ten ;  and  there  was  abun- 
dance of  room  for  them  in  our  great  pilot-house.  Two  or 
three  of  them  wore  polished  silk  hats,  elaborate  shirt-fronts, 
diamond  breastpins,  kid  gloves,  and  patent-leather  boots. 
They  were  choice  in  their  English,  and  bore  themselves  with 
a  dignity  proper  to  men  of  solid  means  and  prodigious 
reputation  as  pilots.  The  others  were  more  or  less  loosely 
clad,  and  wore  upon  their  heads  tall  felt  cones  that  were 
suggestive  of  the  days  of  the  Commonwealth. 

I  was  a  cipher  in  this  august  company,  and  felt  subdued, 
not  to  say  torpid.  I  was  not  even  of  sufficient  consequence 
to  assist  at  the  wheel  when  it  was  necessary  to  put  the  tiller 


TOO   MUCH   WATER.  93 

hard  down  in  a  hurry  ;  the  guest  that  stood  nearest  did  that 
when  occasion  required  —  and  this  was  pretty  much  all  the 
time,  because  of  the  crookedness  of  the  channel  and  the 
scant  water.  I  stood  in  a  corner ;  and  the  talk  I  listened 
to  took  the  hope  all  out  of  me.  One  visitor  said  to 
another :  — 

"  Jim,  how  did  you  run  Plum  Point,  coming  up  ?  " 

"  It  was  in  the  night ;  there,  and  I  ran  it  the  way  one  of 
the  boys  on  the  '  Diana '  told  me ;  started  out  about  fifty 
yards  above  the  wood  pile  on  the  false  point,  and  held  on  the 
cabin  under  Plum  Point  till  I  raised  the  reef — quarter  less 
twain  —  then  straightened  up  for  the  middle  bar  till  I  got 
well  abreast  the  old  one-limbed  cotton-wood  in  the  bend, 
then  got  my  stern  on  the  cotton-wood  and  head  on  the  low 
place  above  the  point,  and  came  through  a-booming — nine 
and  a  half." 

"  Pretty  square  crossing,  an't  it  ? " 

"  Yes,  but  the  upper  bar  's  working  down  fast." 

Another  pilot  spoke  up  and  said :  — 

"  I  had  better  water  than  that,  and  ran  it  lower  down  ; 
started  out  from  the  false  point  —  mark  twain  —  raised  the 
second  reef  abreast  the  big  snag  in  the  bend,  and  had 
quarter  less  twain."   • 

One  of  the  gorgeous  ones  remarked :  — 

"  I  don't  want  to  find  fault  with  your  leadsmen,  but  that 's 
a  good  deal  of  water  for  Plum  Point,  it  seems  to  me." 

There  was  an  approving  nod  all  around  as  this  quiet  snub 
dropped  on  the  boaster  and  "  settled "  him.  And  so  they 
went  on  talk-talk-talking.  Meantime,  the  thing  that  was 
running  in  my  mind  was,  "  Now  if  my  ears  hear  aright,  I 
have  not  only  to  get  the  names  of  all  the  towns  and  islands 
and  bends,  and  so  on,  by  heart,  but  I  must  even  get  up  a 
warm  personal  acquaintanceship  with  every  old  snag  and 
one-limbed  cotton-wood  and  obscure  wood  pile  that  orna- 
ments the  banks  of  this  river  for  twelve  hundred  miles  ;  and 
more  than  that,  I  must  actually  know  where  these  things 


94 


DISCOURAGED. 


are  in  the  dark,  unless  these  guests  are  gifted  with  eyes  that 
can  pierce  through  two  miles  of  solid  blackness ;  I  wish  the 
piloting  business  was  in  Jericho  and  I  had  never  thought 
of  it." 

At  dusk  Mr.  Bixby  tapped  the  big  bell  three  times  (the 
signal  to  land),  and  the  captain  emerged  from  his  drawing- 
room  in  the  forward  end  of  the 
texas,  and  looked  up  inquiringly. 
Mr.  Bixby  said  :  — 

"  We  will  lay  up  here  all  night, 
captain." 

"  Very  well,  sir." 
That  was  all.  The  boat  came 
to  shore  and  was  tied  up  for  the 
night.  It  seemed  to  me  a  fine 
thing  that  the  pilot  could  do  as 
he  pleased,  without  asking  so 
grand  a  captain's  permission. 
I  took  my  supper  and  went  im- 
mediately to  bed,  discouraged  by 
my  day's  observations  and  ex- 
periences. My  late  voyage's 
note-booking  was  but  a  confusion 
of  meaningless  names.  It  had 
tangled  me  all  up  in  a  knot 
every  time  I  had  looked  at  it  in  the  daytime.  I  now  hoped 
for  respite  in  sleep ;  but  no,  it  revelled  all  through  my  head 
till  sunrise  again,  a  frantic  and  tireless  nightmare. 

Next  morning  I  felt  pretty  rusty  and  low-spirited.  We 
went  booming  along,  taking  a  good  many  chances,  for  we 
were  anxious  to  "  get  out  of  the  river  "  (as  getting  out  to 
Cairo  was  called)  before  night  should  overtake  us.  But  Mr. 
Bixby's  partner,  the  other  pilot,  presently  grounded  the  boat, 
and  we  lost  so  much  time  getting  her  off  that  it  was  plain 
the  darkness  would  overtake  us  a  good  long  way  above  the 
mouth.     This  was  a  great  misfortune,  especially   to  certain 


"  A   TANGLED   KNOT. 


HAT  ISLAND   CROSSING.  95 

of  our  visiting  pilots,  whose  boats  would  have  to  wait  for 
their  return,  no  matter  how  long  that  might  be.  It  sobered 
the  pilot-house  talk  a  good  deal.  Coming  up-stream,  pilots 
did  not  mind  low  water  or  any  kind  of  darkness;  nothing- 
stopped  them  but  fog.  But  down-stream  work  was  different ; 
a  boat  was  too  nearly  helpless,  with  a  stiff  current  pushing 
behind  her ;  so  it  was  not  customary  to  run  down-stream  at 
night  in  low  water. 

There  seemed  to  be  one  small  hope,  however :  if  we  could 
get  through  the  intricate  and  dangerous  Hat  Island  crossing 
before  night,  we  could  venture  the  rest,  for  we  would  have 
plainer  sailing  and  better  water.  But  it  would  be  insanity 
to  attempt  Hat  Island  at  night.  So  there  was  a  deal  of 
looking  at  watches  all  the  rest  of  the  day,  and  a  constant 
ciphering  upon  the  speed  we  were  making  ;  Hat  Island  was 
the  eternal  subject ;  sometimes  hope  was  high  and  sometimes 
we  were  delayed  in  a  bad  crossing,  and  down  it  went  again. 
For  hours  all  hands  lay  under  the  burden  of  this  suppressed 
excitement ;  it  was  even  communicated  to  me,  and  I  got  to 
feeling  so  solicitous  about  Hat  Island,  and  under  such  an 
awful  pressure  of  responsibility,  that  I  wished  I  might  have 
five  minutes  on  shore  to  draw  a  good,  full,  relieving  breath, 
and  start  over  again.  We  were  standing  no  regular  watches. 
Each  of  our  pilots  ran  such  portions  of  the  river  as  he  had 
run  when  coming  up-stream,  because  of  his  greater  familiar- 
ity with  it ;  but  both  remained  in  the  pilot-house  constantly. 

An  hour  before  sunset,  Mr.  Bixby  took  the  wheel  and  Mr. 

W stepped  aside.     For  the  next  thirty  minutes  every 

man  held  his  watch  in  his  hand  and  was  restless,  silent,  and 
uneasy.     At  last  somebody  said,  with  a  doomful  sigh,  — 

"  Well  yonder 's  Hat  Island  —  and  we  can't  make  it." 

All  the  watches  closed  with  a  snap,  everybody  sighed  and 
muttered  something  about  its  being  "too  bad,  too  bad  —  ah, 
if  we  could  only  have  got  here  half  an  hour  sooner ! "  and 
the  place  was  thick  with  the  atmosphere  of  disappointment. 
Some  started  to  go  out,  but  loitered,  hearing  no  bell-tap  to 


96 


AN  EXCITING   SCENE. 


land.  Tb'e  sun  dipped  behind  the  horizon,  the  boat  went 
on.  Inquiring  looks  passed  from  one  guest  to  another ;  and 
one  who  had  his  hand  on  the  door-knob  and  had  turned  it, 
waited,  then  presently  took  away  his  hand  and  let  the  knob 
turn  back  again.     We  bore  steadily  down  the  bend.     More 


INSENSIBLY   THEY   DREW   TOGETHER. 


looks  were  exchanged,  and  nods 
of    surprised  admiration  —  but 
no  words.    Insensibly  the  men 
drew  together  behind  Mr.  Bixby,  as  the  sky  darkened  and  one 
or  two  dim  stars  came  out.   The  dead  silence  and  sense  of 
waiting  became  oppressive.    Mr.  Bixby  pulled  the  cord,  and 
two  deep,  mellow  notes  from  the  big  bell  floated  off  on  the 
night.    Then  a  pause,  and  one  more  note  was  struck.   The 
watchman's  voice  followed,  from  the  hurricane  deck:  — 
"  Labboard  lead,  there !     Stabboard  lead ! " 
The  cries  of  the  leadsmen  began  to  rise  out  of  the  dis- 
tance, and  were  gruffly  repeated  by  the  word-passers  on  the 
hurricane  deck. 

"M-a-r-k     three!  ....  M-a-r-k     three!  ....  Quarter-less- 


WILL   HE   MAKE   IT?  97 

three!  ....  Half    twain!  ....  Quarter    twain!  ....  M-a-r-k 
twain!  ....  Quarter-less"  — 

Mr.  Bixby  pulled  two  bell-ropes,  and  was  answered  by 
faint  jinglings  far  below  in  the  engine  room,  and  our  speed 
slackened.  The  steam  began  to  whistle  through  the  gauge- 
cocks.  The  cries  of  the  leadsmen  went  on — and  it  is  a 
weird  sound,  always,  in  the  night.  Every  pilot  in  the  lot 
was  watching  now,  with  fixed  eyes,  and  talking  under  his 
breath.  Nobody  was  calm  and  easy  but  Mr.  Bixby.  He 
would  put  his  wheel  down  and  stand  on  a  spoke,  and  as  the 
steamer  swung  into  her  (to  me)  utterly  invisible  marks  — 
for  we  seemed  to  be  in  the  midst  of  a  wide  and  gloomy  sea 
—  he  would  meet  and  fasten  her  there.  Out  of  the  murmur 
of  half-audible  talk,  one  caught  a  coherent  sentence  now  and 
then  —  such  as: 

"There;  she's  over  the  first  reef  all  right!" 

After  a  pause,  another  subdued  voice :  — 

"Her  stern's  coming  down  just  exactly  right,  by  George!" 

"Now  she's  in  the  marks  ;  over  she  goes!" 

Somebody  else  muttered:  — 

"Oh,  it  was  done  beautiful  —  beautiful!'''' 

Now  the  engines  were  stopped  altogether,  and  we  drifted 
with  the  current.  Not  that  I  could  see  the  boat  drift,  for 
I  could  not,  the  stars  being  all  gone  by  this  time.  This 
drifting  was  the  dismalest  work;  it  held  one's  heart  still. 
Presently  I  discovered  a  blacker  gloom  than  that  which 
surrounded  us.  It  was  the  head  of  the  island.  We  were 
closing  right  down  upon  it.  We  entered  its  deeper  shadow, 
and  so  imminent  seemed  the  peril  that  I  was  likely  to  suffo- 
cate; and  I  had  the  strongest  impulse  to  do  something,  any- 
thing, to  save  the  vessel.  But  still  Mr.  Bixby  stood  by  his 
wheel,  silent,  intent  as  a  cat,  and  all  the  pilots  stood  shoulder 
to  shoulder  at  his  back. 

"She'll  not  make  it!"  somebody  whispered. 

The  water  grew  shoaler  and  shoaler,  by  the  leadsman's 
cries,  till  it  was  down  to  — 

7 


98 


OVER   SHE   GOES!" 


"Eight-and-a-half!  ....  E-i-g-h-t  feet! E-i-g-h-t  feet! 

,  .  .  Seven-and"  — 

Mr.  Bixby  said  warningly  through  his  speaking  tube  to 

the  engineer :  — 

"  Stand  by, 
now ! " 

"Aye-aye,  sir ! " 
"  Seven- and -a- 
half!    Seven  feet! 
/Sfo-and" — 

We  touched 
bottom !  Instant- 
ly Mr.  Bixby  set 
a  lot  of  bells  ring- 
i  n  g,  shouted 
through  the  tube, 
"Now,  let  her 
have  it  —  every 
ounce  you've 
got!"  then  to  his 
partner, "  Put  her 
hard  down !  snatch 
her!  snatch  her!" 
The  boat  rasped 
and  ground  her 
way  through  the 


"  STAND   "BY,    NOW  !  " 


sand,  hung  upon  the  apex  of  disaster  a  single  tremendous 
instant,  and  then  over  she  went !  And  such  a  shout  as  went 
up  at  Mr.  Bixby's  back  never  loosened  the  roof  of  a  pilot- 
house before ! 

There  was  no  more  trouble  after  that.  Mr.  Bixby  was  a 
hero  that  night ;  and  it  was  some  little  time,  too,  before  his 
exploit  ceased  to  be  talked  about  by  river  men. 

Fully  to  realize  the  marvellous  precision  required  in  laying 
the  great  steamer  in  her  marks  in  that  murky  waste  of 
water,  one  should  know  that  not  only  must  she  pick  her 


OVER  SHE    GOES. 


A   LIGHTNING  PILOT. 


101 


intricate  way  through  snags  and  blind  reefs,  and  then  shave 
the  head  of  the  island  so  closely  as  to  brush  the  overhanging 
foliage  with  her  stern,  but  at  one  place  she  must  pass  almost 
within  arm's  reach  of  a  sunken  and  invisible  wreck  that 
would  snatch  the  hull  timbers  from  under  her  if  she  should 
strike  it,  and  destroy  a  quarter  of  a  million  dollars'  worth 
of  steamboat  and  cargo  in  five  minutes,  and  maybe  a  hun- 
dred and  fifty  human  lives  into  the  bargain. 

The  last  remark  I  heard  that  night  was  a  compliment  to 
Mr.  Bixby,  uttered  in  soliloquy  and  with  unction  by  one  of 
our  guests.     He  said  :  — 

"  By  the  Shadow  of  Death,  but  he  's  a  lightning  pilot ! " 


CHAPTER   VIII. 


PERPLEXING   LESSONS. 


AT  the  end  of  what  seemed  a  tedious  while,  I  had  man- 
aged to  pack  my  head  full  of  islands,  towns,  bars, 
"  points,"  and  bends ;  and  a  curiously  inanimate  mass  of 
lumber  it  was,  too.     However,  inasmuch  as  I   could  shut 

my  eyes 
and  reel 
off  a  good 
long  string 
of  these 
n  a  m  e  s 
without 
leaving  out 
more  than 
ten  miles 
of  river  in 
every  fifty, 
I  began  to 
feel  that  I 
could  take 
a  boat 
d  o  w  n  t  o 
New  Or- 
leans if  I 
could  make  her  skip  those  little  gaps.  But  of  course  my 
complacency  could  hardly  get  start  enough  to  lift  my  nose  a 
trifle  into  the  air,  before  Mr.  Bixby  would  think  of  some- 


LOADING   AND   FIRING. 


THINGS   TO   BE   LEARNED.  103 

thing  to  fetch  it  down  again.     One  day  he  turned  on  me 
suddenly  with  this  settler  :  — 

"  What  is  the  shape  of  Walnut  Bend  ? " 
He  might  as  well  have  asked  me  my  grandmother's  opin- 
ion of  protoplasm.  I  reflected  respectfully,  and  then  said  I 
did  n't  know  it  had  any  particular  shape.  My  gunpowdery 
chief  went  off  with  a  bang,  of  course,  and  then  went  on 
loading  and  firing  until  he  was  out  of  adjectives. 

I  had  learned  long  ago  that  he  only  carried  just  so  many 
rounds  of  ammunition,  and  was  sure  to  subside  into  a  very 
placable  and  even  remorseful  old  smooth-bore  as  soon  as 
they  were  all  gone.  That  word  "old"  is  merely  affectionate; 
he  was  not  more  than  thirty-four.  I  waited.  By  and  by  he 
said, — 

"  My  boy,  you  've  got  to  know  the  shape  of  the  river 
perfectly.  It  is  all  there  is  left  to  steer  by  on  a  very  dark 
night.  Everything  else  is  blotted  put  and  gone.  But  mind 
you,  it  has  n't  the  same  shape  in  the  night  that  it  has  in  the 
day-time." 

"  How  on  earth  am  I  ever  going  to  learn  it,  then  ? " 

"  How  do  you  follow  a  hall  at  home  in  the  dark  ?  Be- 
cause you  know  the  shape  of  it.     You  can't  see  it." 

"  Do  you  mean  to  say  that  I  've  got  to  know  all  the  million 
trifling  variations  of  shape  in  the  banks  of  this  interminable 
river  as  well  as  I  know  the  shape  of  the  front  hall  at  home?" 

"  On  my  honor,  you  've  got  to  know  them  better  than  any 
man  ever  did  know  the  shapes  of  the  halls  in  his  own  house." 

"  I  wish  I  was  dead  ! " 

"  Now  I  don't  want  to  discourage  you,  but  "  — 

"  Well,  pile  it  on  me ;  I  might  as  well  have  it  now  as 
another  time." 

"  You  see,  this  has  got  to  be  learned ;  there  is  n't  any 
getting  around  it.  A  clear  starlight  night  throws  such  heavy 
shadows  that  if  you  did  n't  know  the  shape  of  a  shore  per- 
fectly you  would  claw  away  from  every  bunch  of  timber, 
because  you  would  take  the  black  shadow  of  it  for  a  solid 


104  SHAPES   AND   COLORS. 

cape;  and  you  see  you  would  be  getting  scared  to  death  every 
fifteen  minutes  by  the  watch.  You  would  be  fifty  yards  from 
shore  all  the  time  when  you  ought  to  be  within  fifty  feet  of  it. 
You  can't  see  a  snag  in  one  of  those  shadows,  but  you  know 
exactly  where  it  is,  and  the  shape  of  the  river  tells  you  when 
you  are  coming  to  it.  Then  there  's  your  pitch-dark  night ; 
the  river  is  a  very  different  shape  on  a  pitch-dark  night 
from  what  it  is  on  a  starlight  night.  All  shores  seem  to  be 
straight  lines,  then,  and  mighty  dim  ones,  too;  and  you'd 
run  them  for  straight  lines  only  you  know  better.  You 
boldly  drive  your  boat  right  into  what  seems  to  be  a  solid, 
straight  wall  (you  knowing  very  well  that  in  reality  there  is 
a  curve  there),  and  that  wall  falls  back  and  makes  way  for 
you.  Then  there  's  your  gray  mist.  You  take  a  night  when 
there  's  one  of  these  grisly,  drizzly,  gray  mists,  and  then 
there  is  n't  any  particular  shape  to  a  shore.  A  gray  mist 
would  tangle  the  head  of  the  oldest  man  that  ever  lived. 
Well,  then,  different  kinds  of  moonlight  change  the  shape  of 
the  river  in  different  ways.     You  see  "  — 

"  Oh,  don't  say  any  more,  please !  Have  I  got  to  learn 
the  shape  of  the  river  according  to  all  these  five  hundred 
thousand  different  ways  ?  If  I  tried  to  carry  all  that  cargo 
in  my  head  it  would  make  me  stoop-shouldered." 

"  No !  you  only  learn  the  shape  of  the  river ;  and  you 
learn  it  with  such  absolute  certainty  that  you  can  always 
steer  by  the  shape  that 's  in  your  head,  and  never  mind  the 
one  that 's  before  your  eyes." 

"  Very  well,  I  '11  try  it ;  but  after  I  have  learned  it  can  I 
depend  on  it  ?  Will  it  keep  the  same  form  and  not  go  fool- 
ing around  ?  " 

Before  Mr.  Bixby  could  answer,  Mr.  W came   in  to 

take  the  watch,  and  he  said, — 

"  Bixby,  you  '11  have  to  look  out  for  President's  Island 
and  all  that  country  clear  away  up  above  the  Old  Hen  and 
Chickens.  The  banks  are  caving  and  the  shape  of  the  shores 
changing  like  everything.     Why,  you  would  n't  know  the 


ETERNAL  CHANGES. 


105 


point  above  40.     You  can  go  up  inside  the  old  sycamore 
snag,  now."  J 


So  that  question  was  answered. 
Here  were  leagues  of  shore  chang- 
ing shape.  My  spirits  were  down 
in  the  mud  again.  Two  things 
seemed  pretty  apparent  to  me. 
One  was,  that  in  order  to  be  a 
pilot  a  man  had  got  to  learn  more 
than  any  one  man  ought  to  be 
allowed  to  know ;  and  the  other 
was,  that  he  must  learn  it  all  over 
again  in  a  different  way  every 
twenty-four  hours. 
That  night  we  had  the  watch  until  twelve.     Now  it  was  an 


1  It  may  not  be  necessary,  but  still  it  can  do  no  harm  to  explain  that 
'inside"  means  between  the  snag  and  the  shore.  —  M.  T. 


106  THE   UNPARDONABLE   SIN. 

ancient  river  custom  for  the  two  pilots  to  chat  a  bit  when 
the  watch  changed.  While  the  relieving  pilot  put  on  his 
gloves  and  lit  his  cigar,  his  partner,  the  retiring  pilot, 
would  say  something  like  this :  — 

"  I  judge  the  upper  bar  is  making  down  a  little  at  Hale's 
Point ;  had  quarter  twain  with  the  lower  lead  and  mark 
twain1  with  the  other." 

"  Yes,  I  thought  it  was  making  down  a  little,  last  trip. 
Meet  any  boats  ? " 

"  Met  one  abreast  the  head  of  21,  but  she  was  away  over 
hugging  the  bar,  and  I  could  n't  make  her  out  entirely.  I 
took  her  for  the  '  Sunny  South  '  —  had  n't  any  skylights 
forward  of  the  chimneys." 

And  so  on.  And  as  the  relieving  pilot  took  the  wheel  his 
partner2  would  mention  that  we  were  in  such-and-such  a 
bend,  and  say  we  were  abreast  of  such-and-such  a  man's 
wood-yard  or  plantation.     This  was  courtesy ;  I  supposed  it 

was  necessity.     But  Mr.  W came  on  watch  full  twelve 

minutes  late  on  this  particular  night,  —  a  tremendous  breach 
of  etiquette  ;  in  fact,  it  is  the  unpardonable  sin  among  pilots. 
So  Mr.  Bixby  gave  him  no  greeting  whatever,  but  simply 
surrendered  the  wheel  and  marched  out  of  the  pilot-house 
without  a  word.  I  was  appalled  ;  it  was  a  villanous  night 
for  blackness,  we  were  in  a  particularly  wide  and  blind  part 
of  the  river,  where  there  was  no  shape  or  substance  to  any- 
thing, and  it  seemed  incredible  that  Mr.  Bixby  should  have 
left  that  poor  fellow  to  kill  the  boat  trying  to  find  out  where 
he  was.  But  I  resolved  that  I  would  stand  by  him  any  way. 
He  should  find  that  he  was  not  wholly  friendless.  So  I 
stood  around,  and  waited  to  be  asked  where  we  were.     But 

Mr.  W plunged  on  serenely  through  the  solid  firmament 

of  black  cats  that  stood  for  an  atmosphere,  and  never  opened 
his  mouth.     Here  is  a  proud  devil,  thought  I ;  here  is  a  limb 

1  Two  fathoms.  Quarter  twain  is  2|  fathoms,  13*  feet.  Mark  three  is 
three  fathoms. 

2  "Partner"  is  technical  for  "  the  other  pilot." 


A   VOLUNTEER   WATCH. 


107 


of  Satan  that  would  rather  send  us  all  to  destruction  than 
put  himself  under  obligations  to  me,  because  I  am  not  yet 
one  of  the  salt  of  the  earth  and  privileged  to  snub  captains 
and  lord  it  over  everything  dead  and  alive  in  a  steamboat. 
I  presently  climbed  up  on  the  bench  ;  I  did  not  think  it  was 
safe  to  go  to  sleep  while  this  lunatic  was  on  watch. 

However,  I  must  have  gone  to  sleep  in  the  course  of  time, 
because  the 
next  thing  I 
was  aware 
of  was  the 
fact  that 
day  was 
breaking, 

Mr.   W 

gone,  and 
Mr.  Bixby  at 
the  wheel 
again.  So  it 
was  four  o'- 
clock and  all 
well  —  but 
me ;  I  felt 
like  a  skin- 
ful of  dry 
bones  and  all 
ing   to  ache 

Mr.  Bixby 
what  I  had 
there  for.  I 
was  to  do 
ol  en  ce,  — 
It  took  five 
preposter- 
filter  into 
then  I  judge  it  filled  him  nearly  up  to  the  chin  ;  because  he 


"ALL  WELL — BUT   ME. 


of    them    try- 

at  once. 

asked     me 

stayed  up 
confessed     that     it 

Mr.  W a  benev- 

tell  him  where  he  was. 
minutes  for  the  entire 
ousness  of  the  thing  to 
Mr.  Bixby's  system,  and 


108  DAMAGE   AVOIDED. 

paid  me  a  compliment  —  and  not  much  of  a  one  either. 
Pie  said, — 

"  Well,  taking  you  by-and-large,  you  do  seem  to  be  more 
different  kinds  of  an  ass  than  any  creature  I  ever  saw  before. 
What  did  you  suppose  he  wanted  to  know  for  ? " 

I  said  I  thought  it  might  be  a  convenience  to  him. 

"  Convenience  !  D-nation  !  Did  n't  I  tell  you  that  a  man 's 
got  to  know  the  river  in  the  night  the  same  as  he  'd  know 
his  own  front  hall  ?  " 

"  Well,  I  can  follow  the  front  hall  in  the  dark  if  I  know 
it  is  the  front  hall ;  but  suppose  you  set  me  down  in  the 
middle  of  it  in  the  dark  and  not  tell  me  which  hall  it  is ; 
how  am  I  to  know  ?" 

"  Well,  you  've  got  to,  on  the  river  !  " 

"  All  right.  Then  I  'm  glad  I  never  said  anything  to 
Mr.  W " 

"  I  should  say  so.  Why,  he  'd  have  slammed  you  through 
the  window  and  utterly  ruined  a  hundred  dollars'  worth  of 
window-sash  and  stuff." 

I  was  glad  this  damage  had  been  saved,  for  it  would  have 
made  me  unpopular  with  the  owners.  They  always  hated 
anybody  who  had  the  name  of  being  careless,  and  injuring 
things. 

I  went  to  work  now  to  learn  the  shape  of  the  river ;  and 
of  all  the  eluding  and  ungraspable  objects  that  ever  I  tried 
to  get  mind  or  hands  on,  that  was  the  chief.  I  would  fasten 
my  eyes  upon  a  sharp,  wooded  point  that  projected  far  into 
the  river  some  miles  ahead  of  me,  and  go  to  laboriously 
photographing  its  shape  upon  my  brain ;  and  just  as  I  was 
beginning  to  succeed  to  my  satisfaction,  we  would  draw  up 
toward  it  and  the  exasperating  thing  would  begin  to  melt 
away  and  fold  back  into  the  bank !  If  there  had  been  a 
conspicuous  dead  tree  standing  upon  the  very  point  of  the 
cape,  I  would  find  that  tree  inconspicuously  merged  into  the 
general  forest,  and  occupying  the  middle  of  a  straight  shore, 
when  I  got  abreast  of  it !     No  prominent  hill  would  stick  to 


DISSOLVING   VIEWS. 


109 


its  shape  long  enough  for  me  to  make  up  my  mind  what  its 
form  really  was,  but  it  was  as  dissolving  and  changeful  as 
if  it  had  been  a  mountain  of  butter  in  the  hottest  corner  of 
the  tropics.     Nothing  ever  had  the  same  shape  when  I  was 


LEARNING   THE    RIVER. 

coming  down-stream  that 
it  had  borne  when  I  went 
up.  I  mentioned  these  little 
difficulties  to  Mr.  Bixby.    He  said, — 

"  That 's  the  very  main  virtue  of  the  thing.  If  the  shapes 
did  n't  change  every  three  seconds  they  would  n't  be  of  any 
use.  Take  this  place  where  we  are  now,  for  instance.  As 
long  as  that  hill  over  yonder  is  only  one  hill,  I  can  boom 
right  along  the  way  I  'm  going ;  but  the  moment  it  splits  at 
the  top  and  forms  a  V,  I  know  I  've  got  to  scratch  to  star- 
board in  a  hurry,  or  I  '11  bang  this  boat's  brains  out  against 
a  rock ;  and  then  the  moment  one  of  the  prongs  of  the  V 


110  A   TANGLED   WEB. 

swings  behind  the  other,  I  've  got  to  waltz  to  larboard  again, 
or  I'll  have  a  misunderstanding  with  a  snag  that  would 
snatch  the  keelson  out  of  this  steamboat  as  neatly  as  if  it 
were  a  sliver  in  your  hand.  If  that  hill  didn't  change  its 
shape  on  bad  nights  there  would  be  an  awful  steamboat 
grave-yard  around  here  inside  of  a  year." 

It  was  plain  that  I  had  got  to  learn  the  shape  of  the  river 
in  all  the  different  ways  that  could  be  thought  of,  —  upside 
down,  wrong  end  first,  inside  out,  fore-and-aft,  and  "  thort- 
ships,"  —  and  then  know  what  to  do  on  gray  nights  when  it 
hadn't  any  shape  at  all.  So  I  set  about  it.  In  the  course 
of  time  I  began  to  get  the  best  of  this  knotty  lesson,  and 
my  self-complacency  moved  to  the  front  once  more.  Mr. 
Bixby  was  all  fixed,  and  ready  to  start  it  to  the  rear  again. 
He  opened  on  me  after  this  fashion :  — 

"  How  much  water  did  we  have  in  the  middle  crossing  at 
Hole-in-the-Wall,  trip  before  last  ? " 

I  considered  this  an  outrage.     I  said  :  — 

"  Every  trip,  down  and  up,  the  leadsmen  are  singing- 
through  that  tangled  place  for  three  quarters  of  an  hour  on 
a  stretch.  How  do  you  reckon  I  can  remember  such  a  mess 
as  that  ? " 

"My  boy,  you've  got  to  remember  it.  You've  got  to 
remember  the  exact  spot  and  the  exact  marks  the  boat  lay 
in  when  we  had  the  shoalest  water,  in  every  one  of  the  five 
hundred  shoal  places  between  St.  Louis  and  New  Orleans; 
and  you  mustn't  get  the  shoal  soundings  and  marks  of  one 
trip  mixed  up  with  the  shoal  soundings  and  marks  of  another, 
either,  for  they're  not  often  twice  alike.  You  must  keep 
them  separate." 

When  I  came  to  myself  again,  I  said, — 

"  When  I  get  so  that  I  can  do  that,  I  '11  be  able  to  raise 
the  dead,  and  then  I  won't  have  to  pilot  a  steamboat  to  make 
a  living.  I  want  to  retire  from  this  business.  I  want  a 
slush-bucket  and  a  brush ;  I  'm  only  fit  for  a  roustabout.  I 
haven't  got  brains  enough  to  be  a  pilot;   and  if  I  had  I 


LEARN   OR  DIE. 


Ill 


wouldn't  have  strength  enough  to  carry  them  around,  unless 
I  went  on  crutches." 

"  Now  drop  that !  When  I  say  I  '11  learn 1  a  man  the 
river,  I  mean  it.  And  you  can  depend  on  it,  I  '11  learn  him 
or  kill  him." 

1  "  Teach  "  is  not  in  the  river  vocabulary. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

CONTINUED    PERPLEXITIES. 

'  I  ^HERE  was  no  use  in  arguing  with  a  person  like  this. 

■*•  I  promptly  put  such  a  strain  on  my  memory  that  by 
and.by  even  the  shoal  water  and  the  countless  crossing-marks 
began  to  stay  with  me.  But  the  result  was  just  the  same.  I 
never  could  more  than  get  one  knotty  thing  learned  before 
another  presented  itself.  Now  I  had  often  seen  pilots  gaz- 
ing at  the  water  and  pretending  to  read  it  as  if  it  were  a 
book ;  but  it  was  a  book  that  told  me  nothing.  A  time 
came  at  last,  however,  when  Mr.  Bixby  seemed  to  think  me 
far  enough  advanced  to  bear  a  lesson  on  water-reading.  So 
he  began :  — 

"Do  you' see  that  long  slanting  line  on  the  face  of  the 
water?  Now,  that's  a  reef.  Moreover,  it's  a  bluff  reef. 
There  is  a  solid  sand-bar  under  it  that  is  nearly  as  straight 
up  and  down  as  the  side  of  a  house.  There  is  plenty  of 
water  close  up  to  it,  but  mighty  little  on  top  of  it.  If  you 
were  to  hit  it  you  would  knock  the  boat's  brains  out.  Do 
you  see  where  the  line  fringes  out  at  the  upper  end  and 
begins  to  fade  away  ? " 

"  Yes,  sir." 

"  Well,  that  is  a  low  place ;  that  is  the  head  of  the  reef. 
You  can  climb  over  there,  and  not  hurt  anything.  Cross 
over,  now,  and  follow  along  close  under  the  reef  —  easy 
water  there  —  not  much  current." 

I  followed  the  reef  along  till  I  approached  the  fringed  end. 
Then  Mr.  Bixby  said,  — 

"  Now  get  ready.  Wait  till  I  give  the  word.  She  won't 
want  to  mount  the  reef;  a  boat  hates  shoal  water.     Stand 


A  REEF  AHEAD. 


113 

Now  cramp  her 


by  —  wait — wait  —  keep  her  well  in  hand 
down  !     Snatch  her  !  snatch  her  !  " 

He  seized  the  other  side  of  the  wheel  and  helped  to  spin 
it  around  until  it  was  hard  down,  and  then  we  held  it  so. 
The  boat  resisted,  and  refused  to  answer  for  a  while,  and 
next  she  came  surging  to  starboard,  mounted  the  reef,  and 


THAT   S    A    REEF. 


sent  a  long,  angry  ridge  of  water  foaming  away  from  her 
bows. 

"  Now  watch  her  ;  watch  her  like  a  cat,  or  she  '11  get 
away  from  you.  When  she  fights  strong  and  the  tiller  slips 
a  little,  in  a  jerky,  greasy  sort  of  way,  let  up  on  her  a  trifle  ; 
it  is  the  way  she  tells  you  at  night  that  the  water  is  too 


114 


RUNNING   THE   REEF. 


shoal ;  but  keep  edging  her  up,  little  by  little,  toward  the 
point.      You    are   well   up   on   the   bar,   now ;    there   is   a 


bar     under    every 

point,   because    the 

water  that   comes  down  around 

it    forms    an    eddy  and    allows 

the  sediment  to  sink.      Do  you 

sec    those    fine     lines     on     the 

face  of   the  water   that   branch 

out  like  the  ribs  of  a  fan  ?     Well,  those  are  little  reefs  ; 

you  want  to  just   miss   the   ends  of   them,  but   run   them 

pretty  close.     Now  look  out — look  out  !     Don't  you  crowd 


"set  her  back. 


LEFT   TO   MYSELF.  115 

that  slick,  greasy-looking  place  ;  there  ain't  nine  feet  there ; 
she  won't  stand  it.  She  begins  to  smell  it ;  look  sharp,  I  tell 
you  !  Oh  blazes,  there  you  go  !  Stop  the  starboard  wheel ! 
Quick  !     Ship  up  to  back  !     Set  her  back  !  " 

The  engine  bells  jingled  and  the  engines  answered  promptly, 
shooting  white  columns  of  steam  far  aloft  out  of  the  'scape 
pipes,  but  it  was  too  late.  The  boat  had  " smelt"  the  bar  in 
good  earnest ;  the  foamy  ridges  that  radiated  from  her  bows 
suddenly  disappeared,  a  great  dead  swell  came  rolling  for- 
ward and  swept  ahead  of  her,  she  careened  far  over  to  lar- 
board, and  went  tearing  away  toward  the  other  shore  as  if 
she  were  about  scared  to  death.  We  were  a  good  mile  from 
where  we  ought  to  have  been,  when  we  finally  got  the  upper 
hand  of  her  again. 

During  the  afternoon  watch  the  next  day,  Mr.  Bixby  asked 
me  if  I  knew  how  to  run  the  next  few  miles.     I  said  :  — 

"  Go  inside  the  first  snag  above  the  point,  outside  the  next 
one,  start  out  from  the  lower  end  of  Higgins's  wood-yard, 
make  a  square  crossing  and  "  — 

"  That 's  all  right.  I  '11  be  back  before  you  close  up  on 
the  next  point." 

But  he  was  n't.  He  was  still  below  when  I  rounded  it  and 
entered  upon  a  piece  of  river  which  I  had  some  misgivings 
about.  I  did  not  know  that  he  was  hiding  behind  a  chimney 
to  see  how  I  would  perform.  I  went  gayly  along,  getting 
prouder  and  prouder,  for  he  had  never  left  the  boat  in  my 
sole  charge  such  a  length  of  time  before.  I  even  got  to 
"  setting "  her  and  letting  the  wheel  go,  entirely,  while  I 
vaingloriously  turned  my  back  and  inspected  the  stern  marks 
and  hummed  a  tune,  a  sort  of  easy  indifference  which  I  had 
prodigiously  admired  in  Bixby  and  other  great  pilots.  Once 
I  inspected  rather  long,  and  when  I  faced  to  the  front  again- 
my  heart  flew  into  my  mouth  so  suddenly  that  if  I  had  n't 
clapped  my  teeth  together  I  should  have  lost  it.  One  of 
those  frightful  bluff  reefs  was  stretching  its  deadly  length 
right  across  our  bows  !     My  head  was  gone  in  a  moment ;  I 


116  ON   THE   VERGE   OF  RUIN. 

did  not  know  which  end  I  stood  on  ;  I  gasped  and  could  not 
get  my  breath  ;  I  spun  the  wheel  down  with  such  rapidity 
that  it  wove  itself  together  like  a  spider's  web  ;  the  boat 
answered  and  turned  square  away  from  the  reef,  but  the  reef 
followed  her !  I  fled,  and  still  it  followed  still  it  kept  — 
right  across  my  bows !  I  never  looked  to  see  where  I  was 
going,  I  only  fled.  The  awful  crash  was  imminent  —  why 
did  n't  that  villain  come  !  If  I  committed  the  crime  of  ring- 
ing a  bell,  I  might  get  thrown  overboard.  But  better  that 
than  kill  the  boat.  So  in  blind  desperation  I  started  such  a 
rattling  "  shivaree  "  down  below  as  never  had  astounded  an 
engineer  in  this  world  before,  I  fancy.  Amidst  the  frenzy  of 
the  bells  the  engines  began  to  back  and  fill  in  a  furious  way, 
and  my  reason  forsook  its  throne  —  we  were  about  to  crash 
into  the  woods  on  the  other  side  of  the  river.  Just  then  Mr. 
Bixby  stepped  calmly  into  view  on  the  hurricane  deck.  My 
soul  went  out  to  him  in  gratitude.  My  distress  vanished  ;  I 
would  have  felt  safe  on  the  brink  of  Niagara,  with  Mr.  Bixby 
on  the  hurricane  deck.  He  blandly  and  sweetly  took  his 
tooth-pick  out  of  his  mouth  between  his  fingers,  as  if  it  were 
a  cigar,  —  we  were  just  in  the  act  of  climbing  an.  overhang- 
ing big  tree,  and  the  passengers  were  scudding  astern  like 
rats,  —  and  lifted  up  these  commands  to  me  ever  so 
gently  :  — 

"  Stop  the  starboard.  Stop  the  larboard.  Set  her  back 
on  both." 

The  boat  hesitated,  halted,  pressed  her  nose  among  the 
boughs  a  critical  instant,  then  reluctantly  began  to  back 
away. 

"  Stop  the  larboard.  Come  ahead  on  it.  Stop  the  star- 
board.    Come  ahead  on  it.     Point  her  for  the  bar." 

I  sailed  away  as  serenely  as  a  summer's  morning.  Mr. 
Bixby  came  in  and  said,  with  mock  simplicity, — 

"  When  you  have  a  hail,  my  boy,  you  ought  to  tap  the  big 
bell  three  times  before  you  land,  so  that  the  engineers  can 
get  ready." 


SAVED  FROM  MYSELF. 


117 


I  blushed  under  the  sarcasm,  and  said  I  had  n't  had  any  hail. 

"Ah  !     Then  it  was  for  wood,  I  suppose.     The  officer  of 
the   watch    will 

tell    you    when  =3=l\ 

he    wants    to 
wood  up." 

I  went  on  con- 
suming,  and 
said  I  was  n't  af- 
ter wood. 

"  Indeed  ? 
Why,  what  could 
you  want  over 
here  in  the  bend, 
then  ?  Did  you 
ever  know  of  a 
boat  following 
a  bend  up-stream 
at  this  stage  of   the  river  ?  " 

"  No,  sir,  —  and  I  was  n't  try- 
ing to  follow  it.  I  was  getting 
away  from  a  bluff  reef." 

"  No,  it  was  n't  a  bluff  reef ; 
there  isn't  one  within  three 
miles  of  where  you  were." 

"  But  I  saw  it.  It  was  as  bluff 
as  that  one  yonder." 

"  Just   about.     Run  over  it !  " 

"  Do  you  give  it  as  an  order  ?  " 

"  Yes.     Run  over  it." 

"  If  I  don't,  I  wish  I  may  die." 

"  All  right ;  I  am  taking  the 
responsibility." 

I  was  just  as  anxious  to  kill  the 
boat,  now,  as  I  had  been  to  save 
her  before.     I  impressed  my  orders  upon  my  memory,  to  be 


MB.    B.    STEPPED    INTO    VIEW. 


1.18  A   WONDERFUL   BOOK. 

used  at  the  inquest,  and  made  a  straight  break  for  the  reef. 
As  it  disappeared  under  our  bows  I  held  my  breath ;  but  we 
slid  over  it  like  oil. 

"  Now  don't  you  see  the  difference  ?  It  was  n't  anything 
but  a  wind  reef.     The  wind  does  that." 

"  So  I  see.  But  it  is  exactly  like  a  bluff  reef.  How  am  I 
ever  going  to  tell  them  apart  ?  " 

"  I  can't  tell  you.  It  is  an  instinct.  By  and  by  you  will 
just  naturally  know  one  from  the  other,  but  you  never  will  be 
able  to  explain  why  or  how  you  know  them  apart." 

It  turned  out  to  be  true.  The  face  of  the  water,  in  time, 
became  a  wonderful  book  —  a  book  that  was  a  dead  language 
to  the  uneducated  passenger,  but  which  told  its  mind  to  me 
without  reserve,  delivering  its  most  cherished  secrets  as 
clearly  as  if  it  uttered  them  with  a  voice.  And  it  was  not  a 
book  to  be  read  once  and  thrown  aside,  for  it  had  a  new 
story  to  tell  every  day.  Throughout  the  long  twelve  hun- 
dred miles  there  was  never  a  page  that  was  void  of  interest, 
never  one  that  you  could  leave  unread  without  loss,  never 
one  that  you  would  want  to  skip,  thinking  you  could  find 
higher  enjoyment  in  some  other  thing.  There  never  was  so 
wonderful  a  book  written  by  man  ;  never  one  whose  interest 
was  so  absorbing,  so  unflagging,  so  sparklingly  renewed 
with  every  re-perusal.  The  passenger  who  could  not  read  it 
was  charmed  with  a  peculiar  sort  of  faint  dimple  on  its  sur- 
face (on  the  rare  occasions  when  he  did  not  overlook  it 
altogether)  ;  but  to  the  pilot  that  was  an  italicized  passage  ; 
indeed,  it  was  more  than  that,  it  was  a  legend  of  the  largest 
capitals,  with  a  string  of  shouting  exclamation  points  at  the 
end  of  it ;  for  it  meant  that  a  wreck  or  a  rock  was  buried  there 
that  could  tear  the  life  out  of  the  strongest  vessel  that  ever 
floated.  It  is  the  faintest  and  simplest  expression  the 
water  ever  makes,  and  the  most  hideous  to  a  pilot's  eye. 
In  truth,  the  passenger  who  could  not  read  this  book  saw 
nothing  but  all  manner  of  pretty  pictures  in  it,  painted  by 
the  sun  and  shaded  by  the  clouds,  whereas  to  the  trained  eye 


AN   ENCHANTING   SCENE.  119 

these  were  not  pictures  at  all,  but  the  grimmest  and  most 
dead-earnest  of  reading-matter. 

Now  when  I  had  mastered  the  language  of  this  water  and 
had  come  to  know  every  trifling  feature  that  bordered  the 
great  river  as  familiarly  as  I  knew  the  letters  of  the  alpha- 
bet, I  had  made  a  valuable  acquisition.  But  I  had  lost 
something,  too.  I  had  lost  something  which  could  never  be 
restored  to  me  while  I  lived.  All  the  grace,  the  beauty,  the 
poetry  had  gone  out  of  the  majestic  river  !  I  still  keep  in 
mind  a  certain  wonderful  sunset  which  I  witnessed  when 
steamboating  was  new  to  me.  A  broad  expanse  of  the  river 
was  turned  to  blood  ;  in  the  middle  distance  the  red  hue 
brightened  into  gold,  through  which  a  solitary  log  came 
floating,  black  and  conspicuous  ;  in  one  place  a  long,  slanting 
mark  lay  sparkling  upon  the  water  ;  in  another  the  surface 
was  broken  by  boiling,  tumbling  rings,  that  were  as  many- 
tinted  as  an  opal ;  where  the  ruddy  flush  was  faintest,  was  a 
smooth  spot  that  was  covered  with  graceful  circles  and  radi- 
ating lines,  ever  so  delicately  traced  ;  the  shore  on  our  left 
was  densely  wooded,  and  the  sombre  shadow  that  fell  from 
this  forest  was  broken  in  one  place  by  a  long,  ruffled  trail 
that  shone  like  silver  ;  and  high  above  the  forest  wall  a 
clean-stemmed  dead  tree  waved  a  single  leafy  bough  that 
glowed  like  a  flame  in  the  unobstructed  splendor  that  was 
flowing  from  the  sun.  There  were  graceful  curves,  reflected 
images,  woody  heights,  soft  distances  ;  and  over  the  whole 
scene,  far  and  near,  the  dissolving  lights  drifted  steadily, 
enriching  it,  every  passing  moment,  with  new  marvels  of 
coloring. 

I  stood  like  one  bewitched.  I  drank  it  in,  in  a  speechless 
rapture.  The  world  was  new  to  me,  and  I  had  never  seen 
anything  like  this  at  home.  But  as  I  have  said,  a  day  came 
when  I  began  to  cease  from  noting  the  glories  and  the  charms 
which  the  moon  and  the  sun  and  the  twilight  wrought  upon 
the  river's  face  ;  another  day  came  when  I  ceased  altogether 
to  note  them.      Then,  if  that  sunset  scene  had  beeen  re- 


120 


SIGNS  AND   WONDERS. 


peated,  I  should  have  looked  upon  it  without  rapture,  and 
should  have  commented  upon  it,  inwardly,  after  this  fashion  : 
This  sun  means  that  we  are  going  to  have  wind  to-morrow  ; 
that  floating  log  means  that  the  river  is  rising,  small  thanks 
to  it ;  that  slanting  mark  on  the  water  refers  to  a  bluff  reef 
which  is  going  to  kill  somebody's  steamboat  one  of  these 
nights,  if  it  keeps  on  stretching  out  like  that ;   those  tum- 


bling "  boils  "  show  a  dissolving 
bar  and  a  changing  channel 
there  ;  the  lines  and  circles  in 
the  slick  water  over  yonder  are 
a  warning  that  that  troublesome 
place  is  shoaling  up  dangerously  ; 
that  silver  streak  in  the  shadow  of  the  forest  is  the  "  break  " 
from  a  new  snag,  and  he  has  located  himself  in  the  very  best 
place  he  could  have  found  to  fish  for  steamboats  ;  that  tall 
dead  tree,  with  a  single  living  branch,  is  not  going  to  last 
long,  and  then  how  is  a,  body  ever  going  to  get  through  this 
blind  place  at  night  without  the  friendly  old  landmark  ? 

No,  the  romance  and  the  beauty  were  all  gone  from  the 
river.     All  the  value  any  feature  of  it  had  for  me  now  was 


A  PROFESSIONAL   VIEW. 


121 


the  amount  of  usefulness  it  could  furnish  toward  compassing 
the  safe  piloting  of  a  steamboat.  Since  those  days,  I  have 
pitied  doctors  from  my  heart.  What  does  the  lovely  flush  in 
a  beauty's  cheek  mean  to  a  doctor  but  a  "  break  "  that  rip- 
ples above  some  deadly  disease  ?  Are  not  all  her  visible 
charms  sown  thick  with  what  are  to  him  the  signs  and  sym- 
bols of  hidden  decay  ?  Does  he  ever  see  her  beauty  at  all, 
or  does  n't  he  simply  view  her  professionally,  and  comment 
upon  her  unwholesome  condition  all  to  himself  ?  And  does  n't 
he  sometimes  wonder  whether  he  has  gained  most  or  lost 
most  by  learning  his  trade  ? 


CHAPTER   X. 

COMPLETING   MY  EDUCATION. 

WHOSOEVER  has  done  me  the  courtesy  to  read  my 
chapters  which  have  preceded  this  may  possibly 
wonder  that  I  deal  so  minutely  with  piloting  as  a  science. 
It  was  the  prime  purpose  of  those  chapters ;  and  I  am  not 
quite  done  yet.  I  wish  to  show,  in  the  most  patient  and 
painstaking  way,  what  a  wonderful  science  it  is.  Ship 
channels  are  buoyed  and  lighted,  and  therefore  it  is  a  com- 
paratively easy  undertaking  to  learn  to  run  them  ;  clear- 
water  rivers,  with  gravel  bottoms,  change  their  channels 
very  gradually,  and  therefore  one  needs  to  learn  them  but 
once ;  but  piloting  becomes  another  matter  when  you  apply 
it  to  vast  streams  like  the  Mississippi  and  the  Missouri, 
whose  alluvial  banks  cave  and  change  constantly,  whose 
snags  are  always  hunting  up  new  quarters,  whose  sand- 
bars are  never  at  rest,  whose  channels  are  forever  dodging 
and  shirking,  and  whose  obstructions  must  be  confronted 
in  all  nights  and  all  weathers  without  the  aid  of  a  single 
light-house  or  a  single  buoy ;  for  there  is  neither  light  nor 
buoy  to  be  found  anywhere  in  all  this  three  or  four  thousand 
miles  of  villanous  river.1  I  feel  justified  in  enlarging  upon 
this  great  science  for  the  reason  that  I  feel  sure  no  one  has 
ever  yet  written  a  paragraph  about  it  who  had  piloted  a 
steamboat  himself,  and  so  had  a  practical  knowledge  of  the 
subject.  If  the  theme  were  hackneyed,  I  should  be  obliged 
to  deal  gently  with  the  reader ;  but  since  it  is  wholly  new, 

1  True  at  the  time  referred  to ;  not  true  now  (1882). 


PUTTING   ON  AIRS. 


123 


I  have  felt  at  liberty  to  take  up  a  considerable  degree  of 
room  with  it. 

When  I  had  learned  the  name  and  position  of  every  visible 
feature  of  the  river;  when  I  had  so  mastered  its  shape  that 
I  could  shut  my  eyes  and  trace  it  from  St.  Louis  to  New 
Orleans ;  when  I  had  learned  to  read  the  face  of  the  water 
as  one  would  cull  the  news  from  the  morning  paper  ;  and 
finally,  when  I  had  trained  my  dull  memory  to  treasure  up 
an  endless  array  of  soundings  and  crossing-marks,  and  keep 
fast  hold  of  them,  I  judged  that  my  education  was  complete  : 
so  I  got  to  tilting  my  cap 
to  the  side  of  my  head, 
and  wearing  a  toothpick 
in  my  mouth  at  the 
wheel.  Mr.  Bixby  had 
his  eye  on  these  airs. 
One  day  he  said, — 

"  What  is  the  height 
of  that  bank  yonder,  at 
Burgess's  ?  " 

"  How  can  I  tell,  sir  ? 
It  is  three  quarters  of  a 
mile  away." 

"  Very  poor  eye  — 
very  poor.  Take  the 
glass." 

I  took  the  glass,  and 
presently  said, — 

"  I  can't  tell.     I  suppose  that  that  bank  is  about  a  foot 
and  a  half  high." 

"  Foot  and  a  half  !     That 's  a  six-foot  bank.     How  high 
was  the  bank  along  here  last  trip  ?  " 

"  I  don't  know  ;  I  never  noticed." 

"  You  did  n't  ?     Well,  you  must  always  do  it  hereafter." 

"  Why  ?  " 

"  Because  you  '11  have  to  know  a  good  many  things  that 


"WEARING   A   TOOTHPICK. 


124 


RISING   OR  FALLING. 


it  tells  you.  For  one  thing,  it  tells  you  the  stage  of  the 
river  —  tells  you  whether  there  's  more  water  or  less  in 
the  river  along  here  than  there  was  last  trip." 

"  The  leads  tell  me  that."  I  rather  thought  I  had  the 
advantage  of  him  there. 

"  Yes,  but  suppose  the  leads  lie  ?  The  bank  would  tell 
you  so,  and  then  you  'd  stir  those  leadsmen  up  a  bit.  There 
was  a  ten-foot  bank  here  last  trip,  and  there  is  only  a  six- 
foot  bank  now.     What  does  that  signify  ?  " 

"  That  the  river  is  four  feet  higher  than  it  was  last  trip." 

"  Very  good.  Is 
the  river  rising  or 
falling  ? " 
"  Rising." 
"  No  it  ain't." 
"  I  guess  I  am 
right,  sir.  Yon- 
der is  some  drift- 
wood floating 
down  the  stream." 
"  A  rise  starts 
the  drift-wood,  but 
then  it  keeps  on 
floating  a  while 
after  the  river  is 
done  rising.  Now 
the  bank  will  tell 
you  about  this. 
Wait  till  you  come 
to  a  place  where  it 
shelves  a  little.  Now  here  ;  do  you  see  this  narrow  belt  of 
line  sediment  ?  That  was  deposited  while  the  water  was 
higher.  You  see  the  drift-wood  begins  to  strand,  too.  The 
bank  helps  in  other  ways.  Do  you  see  that  stump  on  the 
false  point  ?  " 
"  Ay,  ay,  sir." 


DO   YOTJ    SEE    THAT 
STUMP?" 


EVERLASTING  MEASURING.  125 

"  Well,  the  water  is  just  up  to  the  roots  of  it.  You  must 
make  a  note  of  that." 

«  Why  ?  " 

"  Because  that  means  that  there  's  seven  feet  in  the  chute 
of  103." 

"  But  103  is  a  long  way  up  the  river  yet." 

"  That 's  where  the  benefit  of  the  bank  comes  in.  There 
is  water  enough  in  103  now,  yet  there  may  not  be  by  the 
time  we  get  there  ;  but  the  bank  will  keep  us  posted  all 
along.  You  don't  run  close  chutes  on  a  falling  river,  up- 
stream, and  there  are  precious  few  of  them  that  you  are 
allowed  to  run  at  all  down-stream.  There  's  a  law  of  the 
United  States  against  it.  The  river  may  be  rising  by  the 
time  we  get  to  103,  and  in  that  case  we  '11  run  it.  We  are 
drawing  —  how  much  ?  " 

"  Six  feet  aft,  —  six  and  a  half  forward." 

"  Well,  you  do  seem  to  know  something." 

"  But  what  I  particularly  want  to  know  is,  if  I  have  got  to 
keep  up  an  everlasting  measuring  of  the  banks  of  this  river, 
twelve  hundred  miles,  month  in  and  month  out  ?  " 

"  Of  course  !  " 

My  emotions  were  too  deep  for  words  for  a  while.  Pres- 
ently I  said,  — 

"  And  how  about  these  chutes  ?  Are  there  many  of 
them  ? " 

"  I  should  say  so.  I  fancy  we  shan't  run  any  of  the  river 
this  trip  as  you  've  ever  seen  it  run  before  —  so  to  speak. 
If  the  river  begins  to  rise  again,  we  '11  go  up  behind  bars 
that  you  've  always  seen  standing  out  of  the  river,  high  and 
dry  like  the  roof  of  a  house  ;  we  '11  cut  across  low  places 
that  you  've  never  noticed  at  all,  right  through  the  middle  of 
bars  that  cover  three  hundred  acres  of  river  ;  we  '11  creep 
through  cracks  where  you  've  always  thought  was  solid  land  ; 
we  '11  dart  through  the  woods  and  leave  twenty-five  miles  of 
river  off  to  one  side  ;  we  '11  see  the  hind-side  of  every  island 
between  New  Orleans  and  Cairo." 


126  A  NEW   LESSON. 

"  Then  I  've  got  to  go  to  work  and  learn  just  as  much 
more  river  as  I  already  know." 

"  Just  about  twice  as  much  more,  as  near  as  you  can  come 
at  it," 

"  Well,  one  lives  to  find  out.  I  think  I  was  a  fool  when 
I  went  into  this  business." 

"  Yes,  that  is  true.  And  you  are  yet.  But  you  '11  not  be 
when  you  've  learned  it." 

"  Ah,  I  never  can  learn  it." 

"  I  will  see  that  you  do." 

By  and  by  I  ventured  again  :  — 

"  Have  I  got  to  learn  all  this  thing  just  as  I  know  the  rest  of 
the  river  —  shapes  and  all  —  and  so  I  can  run  it  atliight  ?" 

"  Yes.  And  you  've  got  to  have  good  fair  marks  from  one 
end  of  the  river  to  the  other,  that  will  help  the  bank  tell  you 
when  there  is  water  enough  in  each  of  these  countless  places, 
—  like  that  stump,  you  know.  When  the  river  first  begins 
to  rise,  you  can  run  half  a  dozen  of  the  deepest  of  them  ; 
when  it  rises  a  foot  more  you  can  run  another  dozen  ;  the 
next  foot  will  acid  a  couple  of  dozen,  and  so  on  :  so  you  see 
you  have  to  know  your  banks  and  marks  to  a  dead  moral 
certainty,  and  never  get  them  mixed ;  for  when  you  start 
through  one  of  those  cracks,  there  's  no  backing  out  again, 
as  there  is  in  the  big  river ;  you  've  got  to  go  through,  or 
stay  there  six  months  if  you  get  caught  on  a  falling  river. 
There  are  about  fifty  of  these  cracks  which  you  can't  run  at 
all  except  when  the  river  is  brim  full  and  over  the  banks." 

"  This  new  lesson  is  a  cheerful  prospect." 

"  Cheerful  enough.  And  mind  what  I  've  just  told  you  ; 
when  you  start  into  one  of  those  places  you  've  got  to  go 
through.  They  are  too  narrow  to  turn  around  in,  too 
crooked  to  back  out  of,  and  the  shoal  water  is  always  up 
at  the  head;  never  elsewhere.  And  the  head  of  them  is 
always  likely  to  be  filling  up,  little  by  little,  so  that  the 
marks  you  reckon  their  depth  by,  this  season,  may  not 
answer  for  next." 


THE   ORATOR  OF   THE   SCOW. 


MEETING  A  RISE. 


129 


"  Learn  a  new  set,  then,  every  year  ?  " 

"Exactly.  Cramp  her  up  to  the  bar!  What  are  you 
standing  up  through  the  middle  of  the  river  for  ?  " 

The  next  few  months  showed  me  strange  things.  On  the 
same  day  that  we  held  the  conversation  above  narrated,  we 
met  a  great  rise  coming  down  the  river.  The  whole  vast 
face  of  the  stream  was  black  with  drifting  dead  logs,  broken 
boughs,  and  great  trees  that  had  caved  in  and  been  washed 
away.     It  required  the  nicest  steering  to  pick  one's  way 


through  this  rushing  raft,  even 
in  the  day-time,  when  crossing 
from  point  to  point ;  and  at  night 
the  difficulty  was  mightily  in- 
creased ;  every  now  and  then 
a  huge  log,  lying  deep  in  the 
water,   would     suddenly    appear 

right  under  our  bows,  coming  head-on  ;  no  use  to  try  to 
avoid  it  then  ;  we  could  only  stop  the  engines,  and  one 
wheel  would  walk  over  that  log  from  one  end  to  the  other, 
keeping  up  a  thundering  racket  and  careening  the  boat  in  a 
way  that  was  very  uncomfortable  to  passengers.  Now  and 
then  we  would  hit  one  of  these  sunken  logs  a  rattling  bang, 
dead  in  the  centre,  with  a  full  head  of  steam,  and  it  would 
stun  the  boat  as  if  she  had  hit  a  continent.  Sometimes  this 
log  would  lodge,  and  stay  right  across  our  nose,  and  back  the 

9 


130  ANTAGONIZING   WAIL. 

Mississippi  up  before  it ;  we  would  have  to  do  a  little  craw- 
fishing, then,  to  get  away  from  the  obstruction.  We  often 
hit  white  logs,  in  the  dark,  for  we  could  not  see  them  till 
we  were  right  on  them;  but  a  black  log  is  a  pretty  dis- 
tinct object  at  night.  A  white  snag  is  an  ugly  customer 
when  the  daylight  is  gone. 

Of  course,  on  the  great  rise,  down  came  a  swarm  of  pro- 
digious timber-rafts  from  the  head  waters  of  the  Missis- 
sippi, coal  barges  from  Pittsburgh,  little  trading  scows  from 
everywhere,  and  broad-horns  from  "  Posey  County,"  Indiana, 
freighted  with  "  fruit  and  furniture  "  —  the  usual  term  for 
describing  it,  though  in  plain  English  the  freight  thus  aggran- 
dized was  hoop-poles  and  pumpkins.  Pilots  bore  a  mortal 
hatred  to  these  craft ;  and  it  was  returned  with  usury.  The 
law  required  all  such  helpless  traders  to  keep  a  light  burn- 
ing, but  it  was  a  law  that  was  often  broken.  All  of  a  sudden, 
on  a  murky  night,  a  light  would  hop  up,  right  under  our 
bows,  almost,  and  an  agonized  voice,  with  the  backwoods 
"  whang  "  to  it,  would  wail  out :  — 

"  Whar  'n  the you  goin'  to  !     Cain't  you  see  nothin', 

you  dash-dashed  aig-suckin',  sheep-stealin',  one-eyed  son  of 
a  stuffed  monkey  !  " 

Then  for  an  instant,  as  we  whistled  by,  the  red  glare 
from  our  furnaces  would  reveal  the  scow  and  the  form  of 
the  gesticulating  orator  as  if  under  a  lightning-flash,  and 
in  that  instant  our  firemen  and  deck-hands  would  send 
and  receive  a  tempest  of  missiles  and  profanity,  one  of  our 
wheels  would  walk  off  with  the  crashing  fragments  of  a 
steering-oar,  and  down  the  dead  blackness  would  shut  again. 
And  that  flatboatman  would  be  sure  to  go  into  New  Orleans 
and  sue  our  boat,  swearing  stoutly  that  he  had  a  light  burn- 
ing all  the  time,  when  in  truth  his  gang  had  the  lantern  down 
below  to  sing  and  lie  and  drink  and  gamble  by,  and  no  watch 
on  deck.  Once,  at  night,  in  one  of  those  forest-bordered 
crevices  (behind  an  island)  which  steamboatmen  intensely 
describe  with  the  phrase  "  as  dark  as  the  inside  of  a  cow," 


TAKING   THEIR   CHANCES. 


131 


we  should  have  eaten  up  a  Posey  County  family,  fruit,  fur- 
niture, and  all,  but  that  they  happened  to  be  fiddling  down 
below  and  we  just  caught  the  sound  of  the  music  in  time  to 


"  GAMBLING    DOWN 
BELOW." 

sheer  off,  doing  no  seri- 
ous damage,  unfortu- 
nately, but  coming  so  near 
it  that  we  had  good  hopes 
for  a  moment.  These 
people  brought  up  their 
lantern,  then,  of  course  ; 
and  as  we  backed  and  filled 
to  get  away,  the  precious 
family  stood  in  the  light  of  it  —  both  sexes  and  various  ages 
—  and  cursed  us  till  everything  turned  blue.  Once  a  coal- 
boatman  sent  a  bullet  through  our  pilot-house,  when  we  bor- 
rowed a  steering-oar  of  him  in  a  very  narrow  place.  * 


CHAPTER  XL 

THE   RIVEE   RISES. 

DURING  this  big  rise  these  small-fry  craft  were  an 
intolerable  nuisance.  We  were  running  chute  after 
chute,  —  a  new  world  to  me, —  and  if  there  was  a  particu- 
larly cramped  place  in  a  chute,  we  would  be  prett}7"  sure  to 
meet  a  broad-horn  there ;  and  if  he  failed  to  be  there,  we 
would  find  him  in  a  still  worse  locality,  namely,  the  head 
of  the  chute,  on  the  shoal  water.  And  then  there  would  be 
no  end  of  profane  cordialities  exchanged. 

Sometimes,  in  the  big  river,  when  we  would  be  feeling  our 
way  cautiously  along  through  a  fog,  the  deep  hush  would 
suddenly  be  broken  by  yells  and  a  clamor  of  tin  pans,  and 
all  in  an  instant  a  log  raft  would  appear  vaguely  through  the 
webby  veil,  close  upon  us ;  and  then  we  did  not  wait  to  swap 
knives,  but  snatched  our  engine  bells  out  by  the  roots  and 
piled  on  all  the  steam  we  had,  to  scramble  out  of  the  way ! 
One  does  n't  hit  a  rock  or  a  solid  log  raft  with  a  steamboat 
when  he  can  get  excused. 

You  will  hardly  believe  it,  but  many  steamboat  clerks 
always  carried  a  large  assortment  of  religious  tracts  with 
them  in  those  old  departed  steamboating  days.  Indeed  they 
did.  Twenty  times  a  day  we  would  be  cramping  up. around 
a  bar,  while  a  string  of  these  small-fry  rascals  were  drifting 
down  into  the  head  of  the  bend  away  above  and  beyond  us  a 
couple  of  miles.  Now  a  skiff  would  dart  away  from  one  of 
them,  and  come  fighting  its  laborious  way  across  the  desert  of 
water.     It  would  "  ease  all,"  in  the  shadow  of  our  forecastle, 


TRACT  DISTRIBUTING. 


133 


and  the  panting  oarsmen  would  shout,  "Gimme  a  pa-a-per ! " 
as  the  skiff  drifted  swiftly  astern.  The  clerk  would  throw 
over  a  file  of  New  Orleans  journals.  If  these  were  picked  up 
without  comment,  you  might  notice  that  now  a  dozen  other 
skiffs  had  been  drifting  down  upon  us  without  saying  any- 


"tbact  distributing:' 

thing.  You  understand,  they 
1  ""%:- — -rv_.  had  been  waiting  to  see  how 

No.  1  was  going  to  fare.  No.  1 
making  no  comment,  all  the  rest  would  bend  to  their  oars 
and  come  on,  now  ;  and  as  fast  as  they  came  the  clerk  would 
heave  over  neat  bundles  of  religious  tracts,  tied  to  shingles. 
The  amount  of  hard  swearing  which  twelve  packages  of  reli- 
gious literature  will  command  when  impartially  divided  up 
among  twelve  raftsmen's  crews,  who  have  pulled  a  heavy  skiff 
two  miles  on  a  hot  day  to  get  them,  is  simply  incredible. 


184  A   NEW   WORLD. 

As  I  have  said,  the  big  rise  brought  a  new  world  under  my 
vision.  By  the  time  the  river  was  over  its  banks  we  had 
forsaken  our  old  paths  and  were  hourly  climbing  over  bars 
that  had  stood  ten  feet  out  of  water  before ;  we  were  shaving 
stumpy  shores,  like  that  at  the  foot  of  Madrid  Bend,  which 
I  had  always  seen  avoided  before;  we  were  clattering  through 
chutes  like  that  of  82,  where  the  opening  at  the  foot  was  an 
unbroken  wall  of  timber  till  our  nose  was  almost  at  the  very 
spot.  Some  of  these  chutes  were  utter  solitudes.  The  dense, 
untouched  forest  overhung  both  banks  of  the  crooked  little 
crack,  and  one  could  believe  that  human  creatures  had  never 
intruded  there  before.  The  swinging  grape-vines,  the  grassy 
nooks  and  vistas  glimpsed  as  we  swept  by,  the  flowering 
creepers  waving  their  reel  blossoms  from  the  tops  of  dead 
trunks,  and  all  the  spendthrift  richness  of  the  forest  foliage, 
were  wasted  and  thrown  away  there.  The  chutes  were  lovely 
places  to  steer  in  ;  they  were  deep,  except  at  the  head  ;  the 
current  was  gentle ;  under  the  "  points "  the  water  was 
absolutely  dead,  and  the  invisible  banks  so  bluff  that  where 
the  tender  willow  thickets  projected  you  could  bury  your 
boat's  broadside  in  them  as  you  tore  along,  and  then  you 
seemed  fairly  to  fly. 

Behind  other  islands  we  found  wretched  little  farms,  and 
wretcheder  little  log-cabins  ;  there  were  crazy  rail  fences 
sticking  a  foot  or  two  above  the  water,  with  one  or  two  jeans- 
clad,  chills-racked,  yellow-faced  male  miserables  roosting  on 
the  top-rail,  elbows  on  knees,  jaws  in  hands,  grinding  tobacco 
and  discharging  the  result  at  floating  chips  through  crevices 
left  by  lost  teeth  ;  while  the  rest  of  the  family  and  the  few 
farm-animals  were  huddled  together  in  an  empty  wood-flat 
riding  at  her  moorings  close  at  hand.  In  this  flatboat  the 
family  would  have  to  cook  and  eat  and  sleep  for  a  lesser  or 
greater  number  of  days  (or  possibly  weeks),  until  the  river 
should  fall  two  or  three  feet  and  let  them  get  back  to  their 
log-cabin  and  their  chills  again  —  chills  being  a  merciful 
provision  of  an  all-wise  Providence  to  enable  them  to  take 


NEW    PEOPLE. 


185 


exercise  without  exertion.  And  this  sort  of  watery  camping 
out  was  a  thing  which  these  people  were  rather  liable  to  be 
treated  to  a  couple  of  times  a  year :  by  the  December  rise 
out  of  the  Ohio,  and  the  June  rise  out  of  the  Mississippi. 
And  yet  these  were  kindly  dispensations,  for  they  at  least 


"yellow-faced  miserables." 

enabled  the  poor  things  to  rise  from  the  dead  now  and  then, 
and  look  upon  life  when  a  steamboat  went  by.  They  appre- 
ciated^ the  blessing,  too,  for  they  spread  their  mouths  and 
eyes  wide  open  and  made  the  most  of  these  occasions.  Now 
what  could  these  banished  creatures  find  to  do  to  keep  from 
dying  of  the  blues  during  the  low-water  season  ! 


136  THE   LOWER   RIVER. 

Once,  in  one  of  these  lovely  island  chutes,  we  found  our 
course  completely  bridged  by  a  great  fallen  tree.  This  will 
serve  to  show  how  narrow  some  of  the  chutes  were.  The 
passengers  had  an  hour's  recreation  in  a  virgin  wilderness, 
while  the  boat-hands  chopped  the  bridge  away  ;  for  there  was 
no  such  thing  as  turning  back,  you  comprehend. 

From  Cairo  to  Baton  Rouge,  when  the  river  is  over  its 
banks,  you  have  no  particular  trouble  in  the  night,  for  the 
thousand-mile  wall  of  dense  forest  that  guards  the  two 
banks  all  the  way  is  only  gapped  with  a  farm  or  wood-yard 
opening  at  intervals,  and  so  you  can't  "  get  out  of  the  river  " 
much  easier  than  you  could  get  out  of  a  fenced  lane ;  but 
from  Baton  Rouge  to  New  Orleans  it  is  a  different  matter. 
The  river  is  more  than  a  mile  wide,  and  very  deep  —  as  much 
as  two  hundred  feet,  in  places.  Both  banks,  for  a  good  deal 
over  a  hundred  miles,  are  shorn  of  their  timber  and  bordered 
by  continuous  sugar  plantations,  with  only  here  and  there  a 
scattering  sapling  or  row  of  ornamental  China-trees.  The 
timber  is  shorn  off  clear  to  the  rear  of  the  plantations,  from 
two  to  four  miles.  When  the  first  frost  threatens  to  come, 
the  planters  snatch  off  their  crops  in  a  hurry.  When  they 
have  finished  grinding  the  cane,  they  form  the  refuse  of  the 
stalks  (which  they  call  bagasse)  into  great  piles  and  set  fire 
to  them,  though  in  other  sugar  countries  the  bagasse  is  used 
for  fuel  in  the  furnaces  of  the  sugar  mills.  Now  the  piles  of 
damp  bagasse  burn  slowly,  and  smoke  like  Satan's  own 
kitchen. 

An  embankment  ten  or  fifteen  feet  high  guards  both  banks 
of  the  Mississippi  all  the  way  down  that  lower  end  of  the 
river,  and  this  embankment  is  set  back  from  the  edge  of 
the  shore  from  ten  to  perhaps  a  hundred  feet,  according  to 
circumstances  ;  say  thirty  or  forty  feet,  as  a  general  thing. 
Fill  that  whole  region  with  an  impenetrable  gloom  of  smoke 
from  a  hundred  miles  of  burning  bagasse  piles,  when  the 
river  is  over  the  banks,  and  turn  a  steamboat  loose  along 
there  at  midnight  and  see  how  she  will  feel.     And  see  how 


A  SHORELESS   SEA. 


137 


you  will  feel,  too !  You  find  yourself  away  out  in  the  midst 
of  a  vague  dim  sea  that  is  shoreless,  that  fades  out  and  loses 
itself  in  the  murky  distances ;  for  you  cannot  discern  the 
thin  rib  of  embankment,  and  you  are  always  imagining  you 
see  a  straggling  tree  when  you  don't.  The  plantations  them- 
selves are  transformed  by  the  smoke,  and  look  like  a  part  of 
the  sea.  All  through  your  watch  you  are  tortured  with  the 
exquisite  misery  of  uncertainty.  You  hope  you  are  keeping 
in  the  river,  but  you  do  not  know.  All  that  you  are  sure 
about  is  that  you  are  likely  to  be  within  six  feet  of  the  bank 


ON   A   SHORELESS   SEA. 


and  destruction,  when  you  think  you  are  a  good  half-mile 
from  shore.  And  you  are  sure,  also,  that  if  you  chance 
suddenly  to  fetch  up  against  the  embankment  and  topple 
your  chimneys  overboard,  you  will  have  the  small  comfort  of 
knowing  that  it  is  about  what  you  were  expecting  to  do. 
One  of  the  great  Vicksburg  packets  darted  out  into  a  sugar 
plantation  one  night,  at  such  a  time,  and  had  to  stay  there 
a  week.  But  there  was  no  novelty  about  it ;  it  had  often 
been  done  before. 

I  thought  I  had  finished  this  chapter,  but  I  wish  to  add  a 
curious  thing,  while  it  is  in  my  mind.  It  is  only  relevant  in 
that  it  is  connected  with  piloting.  There  used  to  be  an 
excellent  pilot  on  the  river,  a  Mr.  X.,  who  was  a  somnambu- 


138  A   BAD   NIGHT. 

list.  It  was  said  that  if  his  mind  was  troubled  about  a  bad 
piece  of  river,  he  was  pretty  sure  to  get  up  and  walk  in  his 
sleep  and  do  strange  things.  He  was  once  fellow-pilot  for  a 
trip  or  two  with  George  Ealer,  on  a  great  New  Orleans 
passenger  packet.  During  a  considerable  part  of  the  first 
trip  George  was  uneasy,  but  got  over  it  by  and  by,  as  X. 
seemed  content  to  stay  in  his  bed  when  asleep.  Late  one 
night  the  boat  was  approaching  Helena,  Arkansas  ;  the  water 
was  low,  and  the  crossing  above  the  town  in  a  very  blind  and 
tangled  condition.  X.  had  seen  the  crossing  since  Ealer 
had,  and  as  the  night  was  particularly  drizzly,  sullen,  and 
dark,  Ealer  was  considering  whether  he  had  not  better  have 
X.  called  to  assist  in  running  the  place,  when  the  door 
opened  and  X.  walked  in.  Now  on  very  dark  nights,  light 
is  a  deadly  enemy  to  piloting ;  you  are  aware  that  if  you 
stand  in  a  lighted  room,  on  such  a  night,  you  cannot  see 
things  in  the  street  to  any  purpose ;  but  if  you  put  out  the 
lights  and  stand  in  the  gloom  you  can  make  out  objects  in 
the  street  pretty  well.  So,  on  very  dark  nights,  pilots  do 
not  smoke  ;  they  allow  no  fire  in  the  pilot-house  stove  if  there 
is  a  crack  which  can  allow  the  least  ray  to  escape  ;  they  order 
the  furnaces  to  be  curtained  with  huge  tarpaulins  and  the 
sky-lights  to  be  closely  blinded.  Then  no  light  whatever 
issues  from  the  boat.  The  undefinable  shape  that  now 
entered  the  pilot-house  had  Mr.  X.'s  voice.     This  said, — 

"  Let  me  take  her,  George  ;  I  've  seen  this  place  since  you 
have,  and  it  is  so  crooked  that  I  reckon  I  can  run  it  myself 
easier  than  I  could  tell  you  how  to  do  it." 

"  It  is  kind  of  you,  and  I  swear  I  am  willing.  I  have  n't 
got  another  drop  of  perspiration  left  in  me.  I  have  been 
spinning  around  and  around  the  wheel  like  a  squirrel.  It  is 
so  dark  I  can't  tell  which  way  she  is  swinging  till  she  is 
coming  around  like  a  whirligig." 

So  Ealer  took  a  seat  on  the  bench,  panting  and  breathless. 
The  black  phantom  assumed  the  wheel  without  saying 
anything,  steadied  the  waltzing  steamer  with  a  turn  or  two, 


A   PHANTOM   PILOT. 


139 


and  then  stood  at  ease,  coaxing  her  a  little  to  this  side  and 
then  to  that,  as  gently  and  as  sweetly  as  if  the  time  had 
been  noonday.     When  Ealer  observed  this  marvel  of  steering, 


THE   PHANTOM   ASSUMED   THE 
"WHEEL." 


he  wished  he  had  not  con- 
fessed !     He  stared,  and  won- 
dered, and  finally  said,  — 
"  Well,  I    thought  I  knew 
how  to  steer  a  steamboat,  but  that  was  another  mistake  of 
mine." 

X.  said  nothing,  but  went  serenely  on  with  his  work.  He 
rang  for  the  leads  ;  he  rang  to  slow  down  the  steam  ;  he 
worked  the  boat  carefully  and  neatly  into  invisible  marks, 
then  stood  at  the  centre  of  the  wheel  and  peered  blandly  out 
into  the  blackness,  fore  and  aft,  to  verify  his  position ;  as 
the  leads  shoaled  more  and  more,  he  stopped  the  engines 


140 


A   SUCCESSFUL  CARRY. 


entirely,  and  the  dead  silence  and  suspense  of  "drifting" 
followed  ;  when  the  shoalest  water  was  struck,  he  cracked  on 
the  steam,  carried  her  handsomely  over,  and  then  began  to 

work  her  warily  into 
the  next  system  of 
shoal    marks ;    the 
same  patient,  heed- 
ful use  of  leads  and 
engines      followed, 
the   boat    slipped 
through     without 
touching      bot- 
tom, and   en- 
tered   upon 
the    third 
and  last 
intri- 


" NOBODY    THERE. 


cacy  of  the  crossing ;  imperceptibly  she  moved  through  the 
gloom,  crept  by  inches  into  her  marks,  drifted  tediously  till 


NOBODY  THERE.  141 

the  shoalest  water  was  cried,  and  then,  under  a  tremendous 
head  of  steam,  went  swinging  over  the  reef  and  away  into 
deep  water  and  safety ! 

Ealer  let  his  long-pent  breath  pour  out  in  a  great,  relieving 
sigh,  and  said  :  — 

"  That 's  the  sweetest  piece  of  piloting  that  was  ever  done 
on  the  Mississippi  River !  I  would  n't  believed  it  could  be 
done,  if  I  had  n't  seen  if." 

There  was  no  reply,  and  he  added  :  — 

"  Just  hold  her  five  minutes  longer,  partner,  and  let  me  run 
down  and  get  a  cup  of  coffee." 

A  minute  later  Ealer  was  biting  into  a  pie,  down  in  the 
"  texas,"  and  comforting  himself  with  coffee.  Just  then 
the  night  watchman  happened  in,  and  was  about  to  happen 
out  again,  when  he  noticed  Ealer  and  exclaimed,  — 

"  Who  is  at  the  wheel,  sir  ? " 

"  X." 

"  Dart  for  the  pilot-house,  quicker  than  lightning !  " 

The  next  moment  both  men  were  flying  up  the  pilot-house 
companion-way,  three  steps  at  a  jump  !  Nobody  there  !  The 
great  steamer  was  whistling  down  the  middle  of  the  river  at 
her  own  sweet  will !  The  watchman  shot  out  of  the  place 
again;  Ealer  seized  the  wheel,  set  an  engine  back  with  power, 
and  held  his  breath  while  the  boat  reluctantly  swung  away 
from  a  "  towhead "  which  she  was  about  to  knock  into  the 
middle  of  the  Gulf  of  Mexico ! 

By  and  by  the  watchman  came  back  and  said, — 

"  Did  n't  that  lunatic  tell  you  he  was  asleep,  when  he  first 
came  up  here  ? " 

«  No." 

"  Well,  he  was.  I  found  him  walking  along  on  top  of  the 
railings,  just  as  unconcerned  as  another  man  would  walk  a 
pavement ;  and  I  put  him  to  bed  ;  now  just  this  minute  there 
he  was  again,  away  astern,  going  through  that  sort  of  tight- 
rope deviltry  the  same  as  before." 

"  Well,  I  think  I  '11  stay  by,  next  time  he  has  one  of  those 


142 


IE   HE    WAS   DEAD!" 


fits.  But  I  hope  he  '11  have  them  often.  You  just  ought  to 
have  seen  him  take  this  boat  through  Helena  crossing.  1 
never  saw  anything  so  gaudy  before.  And  if  he  can  do  such 
gold-leaf,  kid-glove,  diamond-breastpin  piloting  when  he  is 
sound  asleep,  what  could  nH  he  do  if  he  was  dead  ! " 


CHAPTER   XII. 

SOUNDING. 

WHEN  the  river  is  very  low,  and  one's  steamboat  is 
"  drawing  all  the  water  "  there  is  in  the  channel,  — 
or  a  few  inches  more,  as  was  often  the  case  in  the  old  times, 
—  one  must  be  painfully  circumspect  in  his  piloting.     We 


used  to  have  to  "  sound"  a  number  of  particularly  bad  place? 
almost  every  trip  when  the  river  was  at  a  very  low  stage. 


144  SOUNDING. 

Sounding  is  done  in  this  way.  The  boat  ties  up  at  the 
shore,  just  above  the  shoal  crossing;  the  pilot  not  on  watch 
takes  his  "  cub "  or  steersman  and  a  picked  crew  of  men 
(sometimes  an  officer  also),  and  goes  out  in  the  yawl  — 
provided  the  boat  has  not  that  rare  and  sumptuous  luxury, 
a  regularly-devised  "  sounding-boat  "  —  and  proceeds  to  hunt 
for  the  best  water,  the  pilot  on  duty  watching  his  movements 
through  a  spy-glass,  meantime,  and  in  some  instances  assist- 
ing by  signals  of  the  boat's  whistle,  signifying  "  try  higher 
up "  or  "  try  lower  down ; "  for  the  surface  of  the  water, 
like  an  oil-painting,  is  more  expressive  and  intelligible  when 
inspected  from  a  little  distance  than  very  close  at  hand. 
The  whistle  signals  are  seldom  necessary,  however ;  never, 
perhaps,  except  when  the  wind  confuses  the  significant  rip- 
ples upon  the  water's  surface.  When  the  yawl  has  reached 
the  shoal  place,  the  speed  is  slackened,  the  pilot  begins  to 
sound  the  depth  with  a  pole  ten  or  twelve  feet  long,  and  the 
steersman  at  the  tiller  obeys  the  order  to  "  hold  her  up  to 
starboard  ;  "  or  "  let  her  fall  off  to  larboard ;  " 1  or  "  steady 
—  steady  as  you  go." 

When  the  measurements  indicate  that  the  yawl  is  approach- 
ing the  shoalest  part  of  the  reef,  the  command  is  given  to 
"  ease  all !  "  Then  the  men  stop  rowing  and  the  yawl  drifts 
with  the  current.  The  next  order  is,  "  Stand  by  with  the 
buoy  !  "  The  moment  the  shallowest  point  is  reached,  the 
pilot  delivers  the  order,  "  Let  go  the  buoy ! "  and  over  she 
goes.  If  the  pilot  is  not  satisfied,  he  sounds  the  place  again ; 
if  he  finds  better  water  higher  up  or  lower  down,  he  removes 
the  buoy  to  that  place.  Being  finally  satisfied,  he  gives  the 
order,  and  all  the  men  stand  their  oars  straight  up  in  the 
air,  in  line ;  a  blast  from  the  boat's  whistle  indicates  that 
the  signal  has  been  seen  ;  then  the  men  "give  way  "  on  their 
oars  and  lay  the  yawl  alongside  the  buoy  ;  the  steamer  comes 
creeping  carefully  down,  is  pointed  straight  at  the   buoy, 

1  The  term  "  larboard  "  is  never  used  at  sea,  now,  to  signify  the  left  hand ; 
but  was  always  used  on  the  river  in  my  time. 


CUBS   AND   BUOYS.  145 

husbands  her  power  for  the  coming  struggle,  and  presently, 
at  the  critical  moment,  turns  on  all  her  steam  and  goes 
grinding  and  wallowing  over  the  buoy  and  the  sand,  and 
gains  the  deep  water  beyond.  Or  maybe  she  doesn't;  maybe 
she  "  strikes  and  swings."  Then  she  has  to  while  away  sev- 
eral hours  (or  days)  sparring  herself  off. 

Sometimes  a  buoy  is  not  laid  at  all,  but  the  yawl  goes 
ahead,  hunting  the  best  water,  and  the  steamer  follows  along 
in  its  wake.  Often  there  is  a  deal  of  fun  and  excitement 
about  sounding,  especially  if  it  is  a  glorious  summer  day,  or 
a  blustering  night.  But  in  winter  the  cold  and  the  peril 
take  most  of  the  fun  out  of  it. 

A  buoy  is  nothing  but  a  board  four  or  five  feet  long,  with 
one  end  turned  up  ;  it  is  a  reversed  school-house  bench, 
with  one  of  the  supports  left  and  the  other  removed.  It  is 
anchored  on  the  shoalest  part  of  the  reef  by  a  rope  With  a 
heavy  stone  made  fast  to  the  end  of  it.  But  for  the  resist- 
ance of  the  turned-up  end  of  the  reversed  bench,  the  current 
would  pull  the  buoy  under  water.  At  night,  a  paper  lantern 
with  a  candle  in  it  is  fastened  on  top  of  the  buoy,  and  this 
can  be  seen  a  mile  or  more,  a  little  glimmering  spark  in  the 
waste  of  blackness. 

Nothing  delights  a  cub  so  much  as  an  opportunity  to  go 
out  sounding.  There  is  such  an  air  of  adventure  about  it ; 
often  there  is  danger ;  it  is  so  gaudy  and  man-of-war-like  to 
sit  up  in  the  stern-sheets  and  steer  a  swift  yawl ;  there  is 
something  fine  about  the  exultant  spring  of  the  boat  when 
an  experienced  old  sailor  crew  throw  their  souls  into  the 
oars ;  it  is  lovely  to  see  the  white  foam  stream  away  from 
the  bows ;  there  is  music  in  the  rush  of  the  water ;  it  is 
deliciously  exhilarating,  in  summer,  to  go  speeding  over  the 
breezy  expanses  of  the  river  when  the  world  of  wavelets  is 
dancing  in  the  sun.  It  is  such  grandeur,  too,  to  the  cub,  to 
get  a  chance  to  give  an  order  ;  for  often  the  pilot  will  simply 
say,  "  Let  her  go  about !  "  and  leave  the  rest  to  the  cub,  who 
instantly  cries,  in  his  sternest  tone  of  command,  "  Ease  star- 

10 


146  A  PRETTY  GIRL. 

board !  Strong  on  the  larboard  !  Starboard  give  way  !  With 
a  will,  men !  "  The  cub  enjoys  sounding  for  the  further 
reason  that  the  eyes  of  the  passengers  are  watching  all  the 
yawl's  movements  with  absorbing  interest  if  the  time  be 
daylight ;  and  if  it  be  night  he  knows  that  those  same  won- 
dering eyes  are  fastened  upon  the  yawl's  lantern  as  it  glides 
out  into  the  gloom  and  dims  away  in  the  remote  distance. 

One  trip  a  pretty  girl  of  sixteen  spent  her  time  in  our 
pilot-house  with  her  uncle  and  aunt,  every  day  and  all  day 
long.     I  fell  in  love  with  her.     So  did  Mr.  Thornburg's  cub, 

Tom  G .     Tom  and  I  had  been  bosom  friends  until  this 

time ;  but  now  a  coolness  began  to  arise.  I  told  the  girl  a 
good  many  of  my  river  adventures,  and  made  myself  out  a 
good  deal  of  a  hero ;  Tom  tried  to  make  himself  appear  to 
be  a  hero,  too,  and  succeeded  to  some  extent,  but  then  he 
always  had  a  way  of  embroidering.  However,  virtue  is  its 
own  reward,  so  I  was  a  barely  perceptible  trifle  ahead  in  the 
contest.  About  this  time  something  happened  which  prom- 
ised handsomely  for  me :  the  pilots  decided  to  sound  the 
crossing  at  the  head  of  21.  This  would  occur  about  nine  or 
ten  o'clock  at  night,  when  the  passengers  would  be  still  up ; 
it  would  be  Mr.  Thornburg's  watch,  therefore  my  chief  would 
have  to  do  the  sounding.  We  had  a  perfect  love  of  a  sound- 
ing-boat —  long,  trim,  graceful,  and  as  fleet  as  a  greyhound ; 
her  thwarts  were  cushioned ;  she  carried  twelve  oarsmen  ; 
one  of  the  mates  was  always  sent  in  her  to  transmit  orders 
to  her  crew,  for  ours  was  a  steamer  where  no  end  of  "  style  " 
was  put  on. 

We  tied  up  at  the  shore  above  21,  and  got  ready.  It 
was  a  foul  night,  and  the  river  was  so  wide,  there,  that  a 
landsman's  uneducated  eyes  could  discern  no  opposite  shore 
through  such  a  gloom.  The  passengers  were  alert  and  inter- 
ested; everything  was  satisfactory.  As  I  hurried  through 
the  engine-room,  picturesquely  gotten  up  in  storm  toggery, 
I  met  Tom,  and  could  not  forbear  delivering  myself  of  a 
mean  speech :  — 


AWFULLY  DANGEROUS. 


147 


"  Ain't  you  glad  you  don't  have  to  go  out  sounding  ? " 

Tom  was  passing  on,  but  he  quickly  turned,  and  said, — 

"  Now  just  for  that,  you  can  go  and  get  the  sounding-pole 
yourself.  I  was  going  after  it,  but  I  'd  see  you  in  Halifax, 
now,  before  I  'd  do  it." 

"  Who  wants  you  to  get  it  ?     I 
don't.     It 's  in  the  sounding-boat." 

"  It  ain't,  either.     It 's  been  new- 
painted  ;  and  it 's  been 
up  on  the  ladies  cabin 
guards   two  days,   dry- 
ing." 

I  flew 
back,  and 
shortly 
arrived 
among 

the  crowd  of  watch- 
ing and  wondering 
ladies  just  in  time  to 
hear  the  command : 

"  Give  way,  men  !  " 

I  looked  over,  and 
there  was  the  gallant 
sounding-boat  boom- 
ing away,  the  unprin- 
cipled Tom  presiding 
at  the  tiller,  and  my 
chief  sitting  by  him 
with    the    sounding-  "  oh,  how  awhi: 

pole  which  I  had  been  sent  on  a  fool's  errand  to  fetch.  Then 
that  young  girl  said  to  me,  — 

"  Oh,  how  awful  to  have  to  go  out  in  that  little  boat  on 
such  a  night !     Do  you  think  there  is  any  danger  ?  " 

I  would  rather  have  been  stabbed.  I  went  off,  full  of 
venom,  to  help  in  the  pilot-house.     By  and  by  the  boat's 


148  RUN  DOWN. 

lantern  disappeared,  and  after  an  interval  a  wee  spark 
glimmered  upon  the  face  of  the  water  a  mile  away.  Mr. 
Thornburg  blew  the  whistle,  in  acknowledgment,  backed  the 
steamer  out,  and  made  for  it.  We  flew  along  for  a  while, 
then  slackened  steam  and  went  cautiously  gliding  toward 
the  spark.     Presently  Mr.  Thornburg  exclaimed,  — 

"  Hello,  the  buoy-lantern  's  out !  " 

He  stopped  the  engines.  A  moment  or  two  later  he 
said, — 

"  Why,  there  it  is  again  !  " 

So  he  came  ahead  on  the  engines  once  more,  and  rang  for 
the  leads.  Gradually  the  water  shoaled  up,  and  then  began 
to  deepen  again  !     Mr.  Thornburg  muttered  :  — 

"  Well,  T  don't  understand  this.  I  believe  that  buoy  has 
drifted  off  the  reef.  Seems  to  be  a  little  too  far  to  the  left. 
No  matter,  it  is  safest  to  run  over  it,  anyhow." 

So,  in  that  solid  world  of  darkness  we  went  creeping  down 
on  the  light.  Just  as  our  bows  were  in  the  act  of  plowing 
over  it,  Mr.  Thornburg  seized  the  bell-ropes,  rang  a  startling 
peal,  and  exclaimed,  — 

"  My  soul,  it 's  the  sounding-boat !  " 

A  sudden  chorus  of  wild  alarms  burst  out  far  below  —  a 
pause  —  and  then  a  sound  of  grinding  and  crashing  followed. 
Mr.  Thornburg  exclaimed, — 

"  There  !  the  paddle-wheel  has  ground  the  sounding-boat 
to  lucifer  matches  !     Run  !     See  who  is  killed  !  " 

I  was  on  the  main  deck  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye.  My 
chief  and  the  third  mate  and  nearly  all  the  men  were  safe. 
They  had  discovered  their  danger  when  it  was  too  late  to 
pull  out  of  the  way ;  then,  when  the  great  guards  overshad- 
owed them  a  moment  later,  they  were  prepared  and  knew 
what  to  do;  at  my  chief's  order  they  sprang  at  the  right 
instant,  seized  the  guard,  and  were  hauled  aboard.  The 
next  moment  the  sounding-yawl  swept  aft  to  the  wheel  and 
was  struck  and  splintered  to  atoms.  Two  of  the  men  and 
the  cub  Tom,  were  missing  — a  fact  which  spread  like  wild- 


SAVE   HIM,   SAVE  HIM!  149 

fire  over  the  boat.  The  passengers  came  flocking  to  the 
forward  gangway,  ladies  and  all,  anxious-eyed,  white-faced, 
and  talked  in  awed  voices  of  the  dreadful  thing.  And  often 
and  again  I  heard  them  say,  "  Poor  fellows  !  poor  boy,  poor 
boy  ! " 

By  this  time  the  boat's  yawl  was  manned  and  away,  to 
seai;ch  for  the  missing.  Now  a  faint  call  was  heard,  off  to 
the  left.  The  yawl  had  disappeared  in  the  other  direction. 
Half  the  people  rushed  to  one  side  to  encourage  the  swim- 
mer with  their  shouts ;  the  other  half  rushed  the  other  way 
to  shriek  to  the  yawl  to  turn  about.  By  the  callings,  the 
swimmer  was  approaching,  but  some  said  the  sound  showed 
failing  strength.  The  crowd  massed  themselves  against  the 
boiler-deck  railings,  leaning  over  and  staring  into  the  gloom; 
and  every  faint  and  fainter  cry  wrung  from  them  such  words 
as  "  Ah,  poor  fellow,  poor  fellow !  is  there  no  way  to  save 
him?" 

But  still  the  cries  held  out,  and  drew  nearer,  and  pres- 
ently the  voice  said  pluckily,  — 

"  I  can  make  it !     Stand  by  with  a  rope  ! " 

What  a  rousing  cheer  they  gave  him  !  The  chief  mate 
took  his  stand  in  the  glare  of  a  torch-basket,  a  coil  of  rope 
in  his  hand,  and  his  men  grouped  about  him.  The  next 
moment  the  swimmer's  face  appeared  in  the  circle  of  light, 
and  in  another  one  the  owner  of  it  was  hauled  aboard,  limp 
and  drenched,  while  cheer  on  cheer  went  up.  It  was  that 
devil  Tom. 

The  yawl  crew  searched  everywhere,  but  found  no  sign  of 
the  two  men.  They  probably  failed  to  catch  the  guard,  tum- 
bled back,  and  were  struck  by  the  wheel  and  killed.  Tom 
had  never  jumped  for  the  guai'd  at  all,  but  had  plunged 
head-nrst  into  the  river  and  dived  under  the  wheel.  It  was 
nothing ;  I  could  have  done  it  easy  enough,  and  I  said  so ; 
but  everybody  went  on  just  the  same,  making  a  wonderful 
to-do  over  that  ass,  as  if  he  had  done  something  great.  That 
girl  could  n't  seem  to  have  enough  of  that  pitiful  "  hero  " 


150 


HAULED   ABOARD. 


the  rest  of  the  trip ;  but  little  I  cared ;  I  loathed  her,  any 
way. 

The  way  we  came  to  mistake  the  sounding-boat's  lantern 


HAULED   ABOARD. 

for  the  buoy-light  was 
this.  My  chief  said  that 
after  laying  the  buoy  he 
fell  away  and  watched  it 
till  it  seemed  to  be  se- 
cure ;  then  he  took  up  a 
position  a  hundred  yards  below  it  and  a  little  to  one  side  of 
the  steamer's  course,  headed  the  sounding-boat   up-stream, 


? 


A   CLOSE   SHAVE. 


151 


and  waited.  Having  to  wait  some  time,  he  and  the  officer 
got  to  talking ;  he  looked  up  when  he  judged  that  the 
steamer  was  about  on  the  reef  ;  saw  that  the  buoy  was  gone, 
but  supposed  that  the  steamer  had  already  run  over  it ;  he 
went  on  with  his  talk  ;  he  noticed  that  the  steamer  was  get- 
ting very  close  down  on  him,  but  that  was  the  correct  thing ; 
it  was  her  business  to  shave  him  closely,  for  convenience  in 
taking  him  aboard  ;  he  was  expecting  her  to  sheer  off,  until 
the  last  moment ;  then  it  flashed  upon  him  that  she  was  try- 
ing to  run  him  down,  mistaking  his  lantern  for  the  buoy- 
light;  so  he  sang  out,  "Standby  to  spring  for  the  guard, 
men  ! "  and  the  next  instant  the  jump  was  made. 


CHAPTER   XITI. 

A  PILOT'S   NEEDS. 

BUT  I  am  wandering  from  what  I  was  intending  to  do, 
that  is,  make  plainer  than  perhaps  appears  in  the 
previous  chapters,  some  of  the  peculiar  requirements  of  the 
science  of  piloting.  First  of  all,  there  is  one  faculty  which 
a  pilot  must  incessantly  cultivate  until  he  has  brought  it  to 
absolute  perfection.  Nothing  short  of  perfection  will  do. 
That  faculty  is  memory.  He  cannot  stop  with  merely  think- 
ing a  thing  is  so  and  so ;  he  must  know  it ;  for  this  is  emi- 
nently one  of  the  "  exact "  sciences.  With  what  scorn  a 
pilot  was  looked  upon,  in  the  old  times,  if  he  ever  ventured 
to  deal  in  that  feeble  phrase  "  I  think,"  instead  of  the  vigor- 
ous one  "  I  know  !  "  One  cannot  easily  realize  what  a  tre- 
mendous thing  it  is  to  know  every  trivial  detail  of  twelve 
hundred  miles  of  river  and  know  it  with  absolute  exactness. 
If  you  will  take  the  longest  street  in  New  York,  and  travel 
up  and  down  it,  conning  its  features  patiently  until  you 
know  every  house  and  window  and  door  and  lamp-post  and 
big  and  little  sign  by  heart,  and  know  them  so  accurately 
that  you  can  instantly  name  the  one  you  are  abreast  of  when 
you  are  set  down  at  random  in  that  street  in  the  middle  of 
an  inky  black  night,  you  will  then  have  a  tolerable  notion  of 
the  amount  and  the  exactness  of  a  pilot's  knowledge  who 
carries  the  Mississippi  River  in  his  head.  And  then  if  you 
will  go  on  until  you  know  every  street  crossing,  the  charac- 
ter, size,  and  position  of  the  crossing-stones,  and  the  varying 
depth  of  mud  in  each  of  those  numberless  places,  you  will 


STREETS  AND   STREAMS. 


153 


have  some  idea  of  what  the  pilot  must  know  in  order  to 
keep  a  Mississippi  steamer  out  of  trouble.  Next,  if  you  will 
take  half  of  the 
signs  in  that  long- 
street,  and  change 
their  places  once  a 
month,  and  still 
manage  to  know 
their  new  positions 
accurately  on  dark 
nights,  and  keep  up 
with  these  repeated 
changes  without 
making  any  mis- 
takes, you  will  un- 
derstand what  is 
required  of  a  pilot's 
pee rless  m  e  m  o  r  y 
by  the  fickle  Missis- 
sippi. 

I  think  a  pilot's 
memory  is  about 
the  most  wonderful 
thing  in  the  world. 
To  know  the  Old 
and  New  Testa- 
ments by  h  e  a  r  t, 
and  be  able  to  re- 
cite them  glibly, 
forward  or  back- 
ward, or  begin  at 
random  anywhere 
in  the  book  and 
recite  both  ways 
and  never  trip  or 
make     a     mistake,  "a  city  street." 


154  MARKS   AND   REMARKS. 

is  no  extravagant  mass  of  knowledge,  and  no  marvellous 
facility,  compared  to  a  pilot's  massed  knowledge  of  the  Mis- 
sissippi and  his  marvellous  facility  in  the  handling  of  it.  I 
make  this  comparison  deliberately,  and  believe  I  am  not 
expanding  the  truth  when  I  do  it.  Many  will  think  my 
figure  too  strong,  but  pilots  will  not. 

And  how  easily  and  comfortably  the  pilot's  memory  does 
its  work ;  how  placidly  effortless  is  its  way ;  how  unconsciously 
it  lays  up  its  vast  stores,  hour  by  hour,  day  by  day,  and  never 
loses  or  mislays  a  single  valuable  package  of  them  all !  Take 
an  instance.  Let  a  leadsman  cry,  "  Half  twain  !  half  twain ! 
half  twain !  half  twain !  half  twain ! "  until  it  becomes  as 
monotonous  as  the  ticking  of  a  clock  ;  let  conversation  be 
going  on  all  the  time,  and  the  pilot  be  doing  his  share  of  the 
talking,  and  no  longer  consciously  listening  to  the  leadsman ; 
and  in  the  midst  of  this  endless  string  of  half  twains  let  a 
single  "  quarter  twain ! "  be  interjected,  without  emphasis, 
and  then  the  half  twain  cry  go  on  again,  just  as  before :  two 
or  three  weeks  later  that  pilot  can  describe  with  precision 
the  boat's  position  in  the  river  when  that  quarter  twain  was 
uttered,  and  give  you  such  a  lot  of  head-marks,  stern-marks, 
and  side-marks  to  guide  you,  that  you  ought  to  be  able  to 
take  the  boat  there  and  put  her  in  that  same  spot  again  your- 
self !  The  cry  of  "  quarter  twain  "  did  not  really  take  his  mind 
from  his  talk,  but  his  trained  faculties  instantly  photographed 
the  bearings,  noted  the  change  of  depth,  and  laid  up  the  im- 
portant details  for  future  reference  without  requiring  any 
assistance  from  him  in  the  matter.  If  you  were  walking  and 
talking  with  a  friend,  and  another  friend  at  your  side  kept 
up  a  monotonous  repetition  of  the  vowel  sound  A,  for  a 
couple  of  blocks,  and  then  in  the  midst  interjected  an  R, 
thus,  A,  A,  A,  A,  A,  R,  A,  A,  A,  etc.,  and  gave  the  R  no 
emphasis,  you  would  not  be  able  to  state,  two  or  three 
weeks  afterward,  that  the  R  had  been  put  in,  nor  be  able 
to  tell  what  objects  you  were  passing  at  the  moment  it 
was  done.      But  you  could  if  your  memory  had  been  pa- 


ASTONISHING   FEATS. 


155 


tiently   and  laboriously  trained   to    do   that   sort  of   thing 
mechanically. 

Give  a  man  a  tolerably  fair  memory  to  start  with,  and 
piloting  will  develop  it 
into  a  very  colossus  of 
capability.     But  only  in 
the   matters    it   is    daily 
drilled  in.    A  time  would 
come   when    the    man's 
faculties  could  not  help 
noticing  landmarks  and 
soundings,  and  his  mem- 
ory could  not  help  hold- 
ing on  to  them 
with  the  grip  of 
a   vice ;    but   if 
you  asked  that 
same  man  at 
noon    what    he 
had    had    for 
breakfast,    it 
would  be  ten 
chances   to  one 
that  he   could 
not    tell    you. 
Astonishing 
things    can    be 
done    with    the 
human  memory 
if  you  will   de- 
vote it  faithfully 
to   one   particu- 
lar line  of  busi-  "let  a  leadsman  cry,  'half  twain.'" 
ness. 

At  the  time  that  wages  soared  so  high  on  the  Missouri 
River,  my  chief,  Mr.  Bixby,  went  up  there  and  learned  more 


156 


A   PILOT'S   MEMORY. 


than  a  thousand  miles  of  that  stream  with  an  ease  and 
rapidity  that  were  astonishing.  When  he  had  seen  each  divi- 
sion once  in  the  daytime  and  once  at  night,  his  education  was 
so  nearly  complete  that  he  took  out  a  "  daylight "  license ;  a 
few  trips  later  he  took  out  a  full  license,  and  went  to  piloting 
day  and  night, —  and  he  ranked  A  1,  too. 

Mr.  Bixby  placed  me  as  steersman  for  a  while  under  a  pilot 
whose  feats  of  memory  were  a  constant  marvel  to  me.  How- 
ever, his  memory  was 
born  in  him,  I  think, 
not  built.  For  instance, 
somebody  would  men- 
tion a  name.  Instantly 
Mr.  Brown  would  break 
in :  — 

"Oh,  I  knew  him. 
Sallowr-faced,  red-headed 
fellow,  with  a  little  scar 
on  the  side  of  his  throat, 
like  a  splinter  under  the 
flesh.  He  was  only  in 
the  Southern  trade  six 
months.  That  was  thir- 
teen years  ago.  I  made 
a  trip  with  him.  There 
was  five  feet  in  the  upper 
river  then  ;  the  '  Henry 
Blake '  grounded  at  the 
foot  of  Tower  Island  drawing  four  and  a  half ;  the  '  George 
Elliott '  unshipped  her  rudder  on  the  wreck  of  the  '  Sun- 
flower' "  — 

"  Why,  the  '  Sunflower '  did  n't  sink  until  "  — 

"  I  know  when  she  sunk  ;  it  was  three  years  before  that, 

on  the  2d  of  December ;  Asa  Hardy  wras  captain  of  her,  and 

his  brother  John  was  first  clerk  ;  and  it  wras  his  first  trip  in 

her,  too  ;  Tom  Jones  told  me  these  things  a  week  afterward 


OH,  I  knew  him.'" 


AND   HIS   TONGUE. 


157 


in  New  Orleans ;  he  was  first  mate  of  the  '  Sunflower/ 
Captain  Hardy  stuck  a  nail  in  his  foot  the  6th  of  July  of 
the  next  year,  and  died  of  the  lockjaw  on  the  15th.  His 
brother  John  died  two  years  after,  —  3d  of  March,  —  erysip- 
elas. I  never  saw  either  of  the  Hardys,  —  they  were  Alle- 
ghany River  men,  —  but  people  who  knew  them  told  me  all 
these  things.  And  they  said  Captain  Hardy  wore  yarn 
socks  winter  and  summer  just  the  same,  and  his  first  wife's 
name  was  Jane  Shook,  —  she  was  from  New  England,  —  and 
his  second  one  died 
in  a  lunatic  asylum. 
It  was  in  the  blood. 
She  was  from  Lexing- 
ton,  Kentucky. 
Name  was  Horton  be- 
fore she  was  mar- 
ried." 

And  so  on,  by  the 
hour,  the  man's 
tongue  would  go.  He 
could  not  forget  any 
thing.  It  was  simply 
impossible.  The  most 
trivial  details  re- 
mained as  distinct 
and  luminous  in  his 
head,  after   they  had 

lain  there  for  years,  as  the  most  memorable  events, 
was  not  simply  a  pilot's  memory  ;  its  grasp  was  universal. 
If  he  were  talking  about  a  trifling  letter  he  had  received 
seven  years  before,  he  was  pretty  sure  to  deliver  you  the 
entire  screed  from  memory.  And  then  without  observing 
that  he  was  departing  from  the  true  line  of  his  talk,  he 
was  more  than  likely  to  hurl  in  a  long-drawn  paren- 
thetical biography  of  the  writer  'of  that  letter ;  and  you 
were   lucky  indeed   if  he    did   not    take   up   that   writer's 


"SO  FULL   OF   LAUGH." 


His 


158  TOO  MUCH  RICHNESS. 

relatives,  one  by  one,  and  give  you  their  biographies, 
too. 

Such  a  memory  as  that  is  a  great  misfortune.  To  it,  all 
occurrences  are  of  the  same  size.  Its  possessor  cannot  dis- 
tinguish an  interesting  circumstance  from  an  uninteresting 
one.  As  a  talker,  he  is  bound  to  clog  his  narrative  with 
tiresome  details  and  make  himself  an  insufferable  bore. 
Moreover,  he  cannot  stick  to  his  subject.  He  picks  up 
every  little  grain  of  memory  he  discerns  in  his  way,  and 
so  is  led  aside.  Mr.  Brown  would  start  out  with  the  honest 
intention  of  telling  you  a  vastly  funny  anecdote  about  a  dog. 
He  would  be  "  so  full  of  laugh  "  that  he  could  hardly  begin ; 
then  his  memory  would  start  with  the  dog's  breed  and  per- 
sonal appearance  ;  drift  into  a  history  of  his  owner ;  of  his 
owner's  family,  with  descriptions  of  weddings  and  burials 
that  had  occurred  in  it,  together  with  recitals  of  congratula- 
tory verses  and  obituary  poetry  provoked  by  the  same  ;  then 
this  memory  would  recollect  that  one  of  these  events  occurred 
during  the  celebrated  "  hard  winter  "  of  such  and  such  a  year, 
and  a  minute  description  of  that  winter  would  follow,  along 
with  the  names  of  people  who  were  frozen  to  death,  and 
statistics  showing  the  high  figures  which  pork  and  hay  went 
up  to.  Pork  and  hay  would  suggest  corn  and  fodder ;  corn  and 
fodder  would  suggest  cows  and  horses ;  cows  and  horses  would 
suggest  the  circus  and  certain  celebrated  bare-back  riders ; 
the  transition  from  the  circus  to  the  menagerie  was  easy  and 
natural ;  from  the  elephant  to  equatorial  Africa  was  but  a 
step ;  then  of  course  the  heathen  savages  would  suggest  reli- 
gion ;  and  at  the  end  of  three  or  four  hours'  tedious  jaw,  the 
watch  would  change,  and  Brown  would  go  out  of  the  pilot- 
house muttering  extracts  from  sermons  he  had  heard  years 
before  about  the  efficacy  of  prayer  as  a  means  of  grace.  And 
the  original  first  mention  would  be  all  you  had  learned  about 
that  dog,  after  all  this  waiting  and  hungering. 

A  pilot  must  have  a  memory ;  but  there  are  two  higher  quali- 
ties which  he  must  also  have.     He  must  have  good  and  quick 


TRAINING  AND   COURAGE.  159 

judgment  and  decision,  and  a  cool,  calm  courage  that  no  peril 
can  shake.  Give  a  man  the  merest  trifle  of  pluck  to  start 
with,  and  by  the  time  he  has  become  a  pilot  he  cannot  be 
unmanned  by  any  danger  a  steamboat  can  get  into ;  but  one 
cannot  quite  say  the  same  for  judgment.  Judgment  is  a 
matter  of  brains,  and  a  man  must  start  with  a  good  stock  of 
that  article  or  he  will  never  succeed  as  a  pilot. 

The  growth  of  courage  in  the  pilot-house  is  steady  all  the 
time,  but  it  does  not  reach  a  high  and  satisfactory  condition 
until  some  time  after  the  young  pilot  has  been  "  standing  his 
own  watch,"  alone  and  under  the  staggering  weight  of  all 
the  responsibilities  connected  with  the  position.  When  an 
apprentice  has  become  pretty  thoroughly  acquainted  with 
the  river,  he  goes  clattering  along  so  fearlessly  with  his 
steamboat,  night  or  day,  that  he  presently  begins  to  imagine 
that  it  is  his  courage  that  animates  him  ;  but  the  first  time 
the  pilot  steps  out  and  leaves  him  to  his  own  devices  he  finds 
out  it  was  the  other  man's.  He  discovers  that  the  article 
has  been  left  out  of  his  own  cargo  altogether.  The  whole 
river  is  bristling  with  exigencies  in  a  moment ;  he  is  not 
prepared  for  them  ;  he  does  not  know  how  to  meet  them ; 
all  his  knowledge  forsakes  him  ;  and  within  fifteen  minutes 
he  is  as  white  as  a  sheet  and  scared  almost  to  death.  There- 
fore pilots  wisely  train  these  cubs  by  various  strategic  tricks 
to  look  danger  in  the  face  a  little  more  calmly.  A  favorite 
way  of  theirs  is  to  play  a  friendly  swindle  upon  the  can- 
didate. 

Mr.  Bixby  served  me  in  this  fashion  once,  and  for  years 
afterward  I  used  to  blush  even  in  my  sleep  when  I  thought 
of  it.  I  had  become  a  good  steersman  ;  so  good,  indeed, 
that  I  had  all  the  work  to  do  on-  our  watch,  night  and  day  ; 
Mr.  Bixby  seldom  made  a  suggestion  to  me ;  all  he  ever  did 
was  to  take  the  wheel  on  particularly  bad  nights  or  in  par- 
ticularly bad  crossings,  land  the  boat  when  she  needed  to  be 
landed,  play  gentleman  of  leisure  nine  tenths  of  the  watch, 
and  collect  the  wages.     The  lower  river  was  about  bank-full, 


160 


LAYING  A   TRAIN. 


and  if  anybody  had  questioned  my  ability  to  run  any  cross- 
ing between  Cairo  and  New  Orleans  without  help  or  instruc- 
tion, I  should  have  felt  irreparably  hurt.  The  idea  of  being- 
afraid  of  any  crossing  in  the  lot,  in  the  day-time,  was  a  thing 
too  preposterous  for  contemplation.  Well,  one  matchless 
summer's  clay  I  was  bowling  down  the  bend  above  island  66, 
brimful  of  self-conceit  and  carrying  my  nose  as  high  as  a 
giraffe's,  when  Mr.  Bixby  said,  — 

"  I  am  going  below  a  while.    I  suppose  you  know  the  next 

crossing  ?  " 

This  was  almost  an  affront. 
It  was  about  the  plainest  and 
simplest  crossing  in  the  whole 
river.  One  couldn't  come  to 
any  harm,  whether  he  ran  it 
right  or  not ;  and  as  for  depth, 
there  never  had  been  any  bot- 
tom there.  I  knew  all  this, 
perfectly  well. 

"  Know  how  to  run  it  ? 
Why,  I  can  run  it  with  my 
eyes  shut." 

"  How  much  water  is  there 
in  it?" 

"  Well,  that  is  an  odd  ques- 
tion. I  could  n't  get  bottom 
there  with  a  church  steeple." 


SCARED    TO   DEATH. 


"  You  think  so,  do  you  ?  " 

The  very  tone  of  the  question  shook  my  confidence.  That 
was  what  Mr.  Bixby  was  expecting.  He  left,  without  saying 
anything  more.  I  began  to  imagine  all  sorts  of  things.  Mr. 
Bixby,  unknown  to  me,  of  course,  sent  somebody  down  to 
the  forecastle  with  some  mysterious  instructions  to  the 
leadsmen,  another  messenger  was  sent  to  whisper  among 
the  officers,  and  then  Mr.  Bixby  went  into  hiding  behind  a 
smoke-stack  where  he  could  observe  results.     Presentlv  the 


WHERE    IS   MR.    BIXBY  ?  " 


WORKING   THE   MINE.  168 

captain  stepped  out  on  the  hurricane  deck  ;  next  the  chief 
mate  appeared ;  then  a  clerk.  Every  moment  or  two  a 
straggler  was  added  to  my  audience  ;  and  before  I  got  to  the 
head  of  the  island  I  had  fifteen  or  twenty  people  assembled 
down  there  under  my  nose.  I  began  to  wonder  what  the 
trouble  was.  As  I  started  across,  the  captain  glanced  aloft 
at  me  and  said,  with  a  sham  uneasiness  in  his  voice, — 

"  Where  is  Mr.  Bixby  ? " 

"  Gone  below,  sir." 

But  that  did  the  business  for  me.  My  imagination  began 
to  construct  dangers  out  of  nothing,  and  they  multiplied 
faster  than  I  could  keep  the  run  of  them.  All  at  once  I 
imagined  I  saw  shoal  water  ahead  !  The  wave  of  coward 
agony  that  surged  through  me  then  came  near  dislocating 
every  joint  in  me.  All  my  confidence  in  that  crossing  van- 
ished. I  seized  the  bell-rope ;  dropped  it,  ashamed  ;  seized  it 
again  ;  dropped  it  once  more  ;  clutched  it  tremblingly  once 
again,  and  pulled  it  so  feebly  that  I  could  hardly  hear  the 
stroke  myself.  Captain  and  mate  sang  out  instantly,  and 
both  together,  — 

"  Starboard  lead  there  !  and  quick  about  it !  " 

This  was  another  shock.  I  began  to  climb  the  wheel  like 
a  squirrel ;  but  I  would  hardly  get  the  boat  started  to  port 
before  I  would  see  new  dangers  on  that  side,  and  away  I 
would  spin  to  the  other  ;  only  to  find  perils  accumulating  to 
starboard,  and  be  crazy  to  get  to  port  again.  Then  came  the 
leadsman's  sepulchral  cry  :  — 

"  D-e-e-p  four  !  " 

Deep  four  in  a  bottomless  crossing  !  The  terror  of  it  took 
my  breath  away. 

"  M-a-r-k  three  !  .  .  .  M-a-r-k  three  .  .  .  Quarter  less 
three  !  .  .  .     Half  twain  !  " 

This  was  frightful !  I  seized  the  bell-ropes  and  stopped 
the  engines. 

"  Quarter  twain  !     Quarter  twain  !     Mark  twain  !  " 

I  was  helpless.     I  did  not  know  what  in  the  world  to  do. 


164 


A  BIG   SCARE. 


I  was  quaking  from  head  to  foot,  and  I  could  have  hung  my 
hat  on  my  eyes,  they  stuck  out  so  far. 

"  Quarter  less  twain  !     Nine  and  a  half !  " 

We  were  drawing  nine  !  My  hands  were  in  a  nerveless 
flutter.    I  could  not  ring  a  bell  intelligibly  with  them.    I  flew 


BACK   HER.' 


\      UiL 


to  the  speaking-tube  and  shout- 
ed to  the  engineer,  — 
"  Oh,  Ben,  if  you  love  me,  bach 
her  !  Quick,  Ben  !  Oh,  back  the 
immortal  soul  out  of  her  !  " 
I  heard  the  door  close  gently.  I  looked  around,  and  there 
stood  Mr.  Bixby,  smiling  a  bland,  sweet  smile.  Then  the 
audience  on  the  hurricane  deck  sent  up  a  thundergust  of  hu- 
miliating laughter.  I  saw  it  all,  now,  and  I  felt  meaner  than 
the  meanest  man  in  human  history.  I  laid  in  the  lead,  set  the 
boat  in  her  marks,  came  ahead  on  the  engines,  and  said  :  — 


"COMFORT    YE." 


165 


"  It  was  a  fine  trick  to  play  on  an  orphan,  was  n't  it  ?  I 
suppose  I  '11  never  hear  the  last  of  how  I  was  ass  enough  to 
heave  the  lead  at  the  head  of  66." 

"  Well,  no,  you  won't,  maybe.  In  fact  I  hope  you  won't ; 
for  I  want  you  to  learn  something  by  that  experience.  Did  n't 
you  know  there  was  no  bottom  in  that  crossing  ?  " 

"  Yes,  sir,  I  did." 

"  Very  well,  then.  You  should  n't  have  allowed  me  or 
anybody  else  to  shake  your  confidence  in  that  knowledge. 
Try  to  remember  that.  And  another  thing  :  when  you  get 
into  a  dangerous  place,  don't  turn  coward.  That  is  n't  going 
to  help  matters  any." 

It  was  a  good  enough  lesson,  but  pretty  hardly  learned. 
Yet  about  the  hardest  part  of  it  was  that  for  months  I  so 
often  had  to  hear  a  phrase  which  I  had  conceived  a  par- 
ticular distaste  for.  It  was,  "  Oh,  Ben,  if  you  love  me,  back 
her  !  " 


CHAPTER   XIV. 

RANK   AND   DIGNITY   OF   PILOTING. 

IN  my  preceding  chapters  I  have  tried,  by  going  into  the 
minutiae  of  the  science  of  piloting,  to  carry  the  reader 
step  by  step  to  a  comprehension  of  what  the  science  consists 
of ;  and  at  the  same  time  I  have  tried  to  show  him  that  it 
is  a  very  curious  and  wonderful  science,  too,  and  very  worthy 
of  his  attention.  If  I  have  seemed  to  love  my  subject,  it  is 
no  surprising  thing,  for  I  loved  the  profession  far  better 
than  any  I  have  followed  since,  and  I  took  a  measureless 
pride  in  it.  The  reason  is  plain  :  a  pilot,  in  those  days, 
was  the  only  unfettered  and  entirely  independent  human 
being  that  lived  in  the  earth.  Kings  are  but  the  hampered 
servants  of  parliament  and  people  ;  parliaments  sit  in  chains 
forged  by  their  constituency  ;  the  editor  of  a  newspaper 
cannot  be  independent,  but  must  work  with  one  hand  tied 
behind  him  by  party  and  patrons,  and  be  content  to  utter 
only  half  or  two  thirds  of  his  mind ;  no  clergyman  is  a  free 
man  and  may  speak  the  whole  truth,  regardless  of  his 
parish's  opinions ;  writers  of  all  kinds  are  manacled  servants 
of  the  public.  We  write  frankly  and  fearlessly,  but  then  we 
"  modify  "  before  we  print.  In  truth,  every  man  and  woman 
and  child  has  a  master,  and  worries  and  frets  in  servitude ; 
but  in  the  day  I  write  of,  the  Mississippi  pilot  had  none. 
The  captain  could  stand  upon  the  hurricane  deck,  in  the 
pomp  of  a  very  brief  authority,  and  give  him  five  or  six 
orders  while  the  vessel  backed  into  the  stream,  and  then  that 
skipper's  reign  was  over.     The  moment  that  the  boat  was 


A  GRAND   MOGUL. 


1G7 


under  way  in  the  river,  she  was  under  the  sole  and  unques- 
tioned control  of  the  pilot.  He  could  do  with  her  exactly  as 
he  pleased,  run  her  when  and  whither  he  chose,  and  tie  her 
up  to  the  bank  whenever  his  judgment  said  that  that  course 
was  best.  His  movements  were  entirely  free  ;  he  consulted 
no  one,  he  received  commands  from 
nobody,  he  promptly  resented  even 
the  merest  suggestions.  Indeed,  the 
law   of  the    United    States    forbade 


VERY   BRIEF   AUTHORITY." 


him  to  listen  to  com- 
mands or  suggestions, 
rightly  considering  that  the 
pilot  necessarily  knew  better 
how  to  handle  the  boat  than 
anybody  could  tell  him.  So 
here  was  the  novelty  of  a  king 
without  a  keeper,  an  absolute  monarch  who  was  absolute  in 
sober  truth  and  not  by  a  fiction  of  words.  I  have  seen  a  boy 
of  eighteen  taking  a  great  steamer  serenely  into  what  seemed 
almost  certain  destruction,  and  the  aged  captain  standing 
mutely  by,  filled  with  apprehension  but  powerless  to  inter- 


168 


RULING   THE   ROOST. 


fere.  His  interference,  in  that  particular  instance,  might 
have  been  an  excellent  thing,  but  to  permit  it  would  have 
been  to  establish  a  most  pernicious  precedent.  It  will  easily 
be  guessed,  considering  the  pilot's  boundless  authority,  that 

he  was  a  great 
personage  in  the 
old  steamboat- 
ing  days.  He 
was  treated  with 
ma  r  k  e  d 
courtesy 
by  the 
captain 
and  with 
ma  rke'd 
deference 
by  all  the 
offi  ce  r  s 
and  serv- 
ants ;  and  this  deferential 
spirit  was  quickly  communi- 
cated to  the  passengers,  too. 
I  think  pilots  were  about  the 
only  people  I  ever  knew  who 
failed  to  show,  in  some  degree,  embarrassment  in  the  pres- 
ence of  travelling  foreign  princes.  But  then,  people  in  one's 
own  grade  of  life  are  not  usually  embarrassing  objects. 

By  long  habit,  pilots  came  to  put  all  their  wishes  in  the 
form  of  commands.  It  "  gravels  "  me,  to  this  day,  to  put 
my  will  in  the  weak  shape  of  a  request,  instead  of  launch- 
ing it  in  the  crisp  language  of  an  order. 

In  those  old  days,  to  load  a  steamboat  at  St.  Louis,  take 
her  to  New  Orleans  and  back,  and  discharge  cargo,  consumed 
about  twenty-five  days,  on  an  average.  Seven  or  eight  of 
these  days  the  boat  spent  at  the  wharves  of  St.  Louis  and 
New  Orleans,  and  every  soul  on  board  was  hard  at  work, 


'TREATED   WITH   MARKED 
DEFERENCE." 


"DIVIDE"  AND    RULE.  169 

except  the  two  pilots  ;  they  did  nothing  but  play  gentleman 
up  town,  and  receive  the  same  wages  for  it  as  if  they  had 
been  on  duty.  The  moment  the  boat  touched  the  wharf  at 
either  city,  they  were  ashore ;  and  they  were  not  likely  to  be 
seen  again  till  the  last  bell  was  ringing  and  everything  in 
readiness  for  another  voyage. 

When  a  captain  got  hold  of  a  pilot  of  particularly  high 
reputation,  he  took  pains  to  keep  him.  When  wages  were 
four  hundred  dollars  a  month  on  the  Upper  Mississippi,  I 
have  known  a  captain  to  keep  such  a  pilot  in  idleness,  under 
full  pay,  three  months  at  a  time,  while  the  river  was  frozen 
up.  And  one  must  remember  that  in  those  cheap  times 
four  hundred  dollars  was  a  salary  of  almost  inconceivable 
splendor.  Few  men  on  shore  got  such  pay  as  that,  and 
when  they  did  they  were  mightily  looked  up  to.  When 
pilots  from  either  end  of  the  river  wandered  into  our  small 
Missouri  village,  they  were  sought  by  the  best  and  the  fair- 
est, and  treated  with  exalted  respect.  Lying  in  port  under 
wages  was  a  thing  which  many  pilots  greatly  enjoyed  and 
appreciated ;  especially  if  they  belonged  in  the  Missouri 
River  in  the  heyday  of  that  trade  (Kansas  times),  and  got 
nine  hundred  dollars  a  trip,  which  was  equivalent  to  about 
eighteen  hundred  dollars  a  month.  Here  is  a  conversation 
of  that  day.  A  chap  out  of  the  Illinois  River,  with  a  little 
stern-wheel  tub,  accosts  a  couple  of  ornate  and  gilded 
Missouri  River  pilots  :  — 

"  Gentlemen,  I've  got  a  pretty  good  trip  for  the  up-country, 
and  shall  want  you  about  a  month.     How  much  will  it  be  ?  " 

"  Eighteen  hundred  dollars  apiece." 

"  Heavens  and  earth !  You  take  my  boat,  let  me  have 
your  wages,  and  I  '11  divide  !  " 

I  will  remark,  in  passing,  that  Mississippi  steamboatmen 
were  important  in  landsmen's  eyes  (and  in  their  own,  too, 
in  a  degree)  according  to  the  dignity  of  the  boat  they  were 
on.  For  instance,  it  was  a  proud  thing  to  be  of  the  crew 
of  such  stately  craft  as  the  '■'  Aleck  Scott "  or  the  "  Grand 


170 


THE   SWELLS. 


Turk."  Negro  firemen,  deck  hands,  and  barbers  belonging 
to  those  boats  were  distinguished  personages  in  their  grade 
of  life,  and  they  were  well  aware  of  that  fact,  too.  A  stal- 
wart darkey  once  gave  offence  at  a  negro  ball  in  New  Orleans 

by   putting 
T  on    a    good 

many  airs. 
Finally  one 
of  the  mana- 
gers bustled 
up  to  him 
and  said, — 
"Who    is 


any 
Who 


you, 

way  ? 

is  you 
dat  's  what 
/  wants  to 
know  ! " 

The  of- 
fender was 
not  discon- 
certed in  the 
least,  but 
swelled  him- 
self up  and 
threw  that 
into  his 
voice  which 
showed  that 
he  knew  he 

was  not  putting  on  all  those  airs  on  a  stinted  capital. 

"  Who  is  I  ?  Who  is  I  ?  I  let  you  know  mighty  quick  who 

1  is !  I  want  you  niggers  to  understan'  dat  I  fires  de  middle 

do'  i  on  de  '  Aleck  Scott ! '  " 


'you  take  my  boat 


1  Door. 


THE   "GRAND   TURK." 


171 


"  NO  EOOLIN  ! " 


That  was  sufficient. 
The  barber  of  the  "  Grand 
Turk"  was  a  spruce  young  ne- 
gro, who  aired  his  importance 
with  balmy  complacency,  and 
was    greatly    courted    by    the 
circle  in  which  he  moved.    The 
young    colored    population   of 
New  Orleans  were  much  given 
to  flirting,  at  twilight,  on  the 
banquettes  of  the  back  streets. 
Somebody  saw  and  heard  some- 
thing like  the  following,   one 
evening,  in  one  of  those  locali- 
ties.     A    middle-aged     negro 
woman     projected     her    head 
through    a  broken    pane   and 
shouted  (very  willing  that  the 
neighbors    should    hear    and 
envy),  "You  Mary  Ann,  come 
in  de  house   dis   min- 
ute !    Stannin'  out  dah 
foolin'    'long   wid   dat* 
low  trash,   an'  heah's 
de    barber    off  'n    de 
'  Gran'    Turk  '    wants  I 
to  conwerse  wid  you !  " 
My  reference,  a  mo- 
ment ago,  to  the  fact 
that  a  pilot's  peculiar 
official  position  placed 
him  out  of  the  reach 
of    criticism    or    com- 
mand, brings  Stephen 
W — : — -  naturally  to 
mv  mind.     He  was  a 


172  STEPHEN  W. 

gifted  pilot,  a  good  fellow,  a  tireless  talker,  and  had  both 
wit  and  humor  in  him.  He  had  a  most  irreverent  inde- 
pendence, too,  and  was  deliciously  easy-going  and  comfort- 
able in  the  presence  of  age,  official  dignity,  and  even  the 
most  august  wealth.  He  always  had  work,  he  never  saved 
a  penny,  he  was  a  most  persuasive  borrower,  he  was  in 
debt  to  every  pilot  on  the  river,  and  to  the  majority  of  the 
captains.  He  could  throw  a  sort  of  splendor  around  a  bit 
of  harum-scarum,  devil-may-care  piloting,  that  made  it 
almost    fascinating  —  but  not    to   everybody.     He   made  a 

trip  with  good  old  Captain  Y once,  and  was  "  relieved  " 

from  duty  when  the  boat  got  to  New  Orleans.  Somebody 
expressed  surprise  at  the  discharge.  Captain  Y shud- 
dered at  the  mere  mention  of  Stephen.  Then  his  poor,  thin 
old  voice  piped  out  something  like  this  :  — 

"  Why,  bless  me  !  I  would  n't  have  such  a  wild  creature  on 
my  boat  for  the  world  —  not  for  the  whole  world !  He 
swears,  he  sings,  he  whistles,  he  yells  —  I  never  saw  such  an 
Injun  to  yell.  All  times  of  the  night  —  it  never  made  any 
difference  to  him.  He  would  just  yell  that  way,  not  for 
anything  in  particular,  but  merely  on  account  of  a  kind  of 
devilish  comfort  he  got  out  of  it.  I  never  could  get  into  a 
sound  sleep  but  he  would  fetch  me  out  of  bed,  all  in  a  cold 
sweat,  with  one  of  those  dreadful  war-whoops.  A  queer  being, 
—  very  queer  being ;  no  respect  for  anything  or  anybody. 
Sometimes  he  called  me  '  Johnny.'  And  he  kept  a  fiddle, 
and  a  cat.  He  played  execrably.  This  seemed  to  distress 
the  cat,  and  so  the  cat  would  howl.  Nobody  could  sleep 
where  that  man  —  and  his  family  —  was.  And  reckless  ? 
There  never  was  anything  like  it.  Now  you  may  believe  it 
or  not,  but  as  sure  as  I  am  sitting  here,  he  brought  my  boat 
a-tilting  down  through  those  awful  snags  at  Chicot  under  a 
rattling  head  of  steam,  and  the  wind  a-blowing  like  the  very 
nation,  at  that!  My  officers  will  tell  you  so.  They  saw  it. 
And,  sir,  while  he  was  a-tearing  right  down  through  those 
snags,  and  I  a-shaking  in  my  shoes  and  praying,  I  wish  I  may 


PUCKERING. 


173 


never  speak  again  if  he  did  n't  pucker  up  his  mouth  and  go 
to  whistling !  Yes,  sir ;  whistling  '  Buffalo  gals,  can't  you 
come  out  to-night,  can't  you  come  out  to-night,  can't  you 
come  out  to-night ; '  and  doing  it  as  calmly  as  if  we  were 
attending  a  funeral  and  were  n't  related  to  the  corpse.  And 
when  I  remonstrated  with  him  about  it,  he  smiled  down  on 


"■WENT   TO   WHISTLING. 


me  as  if  I  was  his  child,  and  told  me  to  run  in  the  house  and 
try  to  be  good,  and  not  be  meddling  with  my  superiors  ! "  * 

Once  a  pretty  mean  captain  caught  Stephen  in  New  Orleans 
out  of  work  and  as  usual    out  of  money.     He  laid  steady 

1  Considering  a  captain's  ostentatious  but  hollow  chieftainship,  and  a  pilot's 
real  authority,  there  was  something  impudently  apt  and  happy  about  that 
way  of  phrasing  it. 


174  STEPHEN   CORNERED. 

siege  to  Stephen,  who  was  in  a  very  "  close  place,"  and 
finally  persuaded  him  to  hire  with  him  at  one  hundred  and 
twenty-five  dollars  per  month,  just  half  wages,  the  captain 
agreeing  not  to  divulge  the  secret  and  so  bring  down  the 
contempt  of  all  the  guild  upon  the  poor  fellow.  But  the 
boat  was  _  not  more  than  a  day  out  of  New  Orleans  before 
Stephen  discovered  that  the  captain  was  boasting  of  his 
exploit,  and  that  all  the  officers  had  been  told.  Stephen 
winced,  but  said  nothing.  About  the  middle  of  the  after- 
noon the  captain  stepped  out  on  the  hurricane  deck,  cast  his 
eye  around,  and  looked  a  good  deal  surprised.  He  glanced 
inquiringly  aloft  at  Stephen,  but  Stephen  was  whistling 
placidly,  and  attending  to  business.  The  captain  stood 
around  a  while  in  evident  discomfort,  and  once  or  twice 
seemed  about  to  make  a  suggestion  ;  but  the  etiquette  of  the 
river  taught  him  to  avoid  that  sort  of  rashness,  and  so  he 
managed  to  hold  his  peace.  He  chafed  and  puzzled  a  few 
minutes  longer,  then  retired  to  his  apartments.  But  soon  he 
was  out  again,  and  apparently  more  perplexed  than  ever. 
Presently  he  ventured  to  remark,  with  deference,  — 

"  Pretty  good  stage  of  the  river  now,  ain't  it,  sir  ? " 

"  Well,  I  should  say  so  !  Bank-full  is  a  pretty  liberal 
stage." 

"  Seems  to  be  a  good  deal  of  current  here." 

"Good  deal  don't  describe  it!  It's  worse  than  a  mill- 
race." 

"  Is  n't  it  easier  in  toward  shore  than  it  is  out  here  in  the 
middle  ?  " 

"  Yes,  I  reckon  it  is  ;  but  a  body  can't  be  too  careful  witli 
a  steamboat.  It 's  pretty  safe  out  here ;  can't  strike  any 
bottom  here,  you  can  depend  on  that." 

The  captain  departed,  looking  rueful  enough.  At  this 
rate,  he  would  probably  die  of  old  age  before  his  boat  got  to 
St.  Louis.  Next  day  he  appeared  on  deck  and  again  found 
Stephen  faithfully  standing  up  the  middle  of  the  river, 
fighting  the  whole  vast  force  of  the  Mississippi,  and  whistling 


STEPHEN   TRUMPS   THE   TRICK.  175 

the  same  placid  tune.  This  thing  was  becoming  serious. 
In  by  the  shore  was  a  slower  boat  clipping  along  in  the  easy 
water  and  gaining  steadily ;  she  began  to  make  for  an  island 
chute ;  Stephen  stuck  to  the  middle  of  the  river.  Speech 
was  wrung  from  the  captain.     He  said,  — 

"  Mr.  W ,  don't  that  chute  cut  off  a  good    deal    of 

distance  ?" 

"  I  think  it  does,  but  I  don't  know." 

"  Don't  know  !  Well,  is  n't  there  water  enough  in  it  now 
to  go  through  ?" 

"  I  expect  there  is,  but  I  am  not  certain." 

"  Upon  my  word  this  is  odd !  Why,  those  pilots  on  that 
boat  yonder  are  going  to  try  it.  Do  you  mean  to  say  that 
you  don't  know  as  much  as  they  do  ?  " 

"  They !  Why,  they  are  two-hundred-and-lifty-dollar  pilots! 
But  don't  you  be  uneasy ;  I  know  as  much  as  any  man  can 
afford  to  know  for  a  hundred  and  twenty-five  !  " 

The  captain  surrendered. 

Five  minutes  later  Stephen  was  bowling  through  the  chute 
and  showing  the  rival  boat  a  two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar 
pair  of  heels. 


CHAPTER    XV. 

THE  PILOTS'  MONOPOLY. 

ONE  day,  on  board  the  "  Aleck  Scott,"  niy  chief,  Mr. 
Bixby,  was  crawling  carefully  through  a  close  place  at 
Cat  Island,  both  leads  going,  and  everybody  holding  his 
breath.  The  captain,  a  nervous,  apprehensive  man,  kept 
still  as  long  as  he  could,  but  finally  broke  down  and  shouted 
from  the  hurricane  deck,  — 

"  For  gracious'  sake,  give  her  steam,  Mr.  Bixby  !  give  her 
steam  !  She  '11  never  raise  the  reef  on  this  headway  !  " 

For  all  the  effect  that  was  produced  upon  Mr.  Bixby,  one 
would  have  supposed  that  no  remark  had  been  made.  But 
five  minutes  later,  when  the  danger  was  past  and  the  leads 
laid  in,  he  burst  instantly  into  a  consuming  fury,  and  gave 
the  captain  the  most  admirable  cursing  I  ever  listened  to. 
No  bloodshed  ensued ;  but  that  was  because  the  captain's 
cause  was  weak ;  for  ordinarily  he  was  not  a  man  to  take 
correction  quietly. 

Having  now  set  forth  in  detail  the  nature  of  the  science  of 
piloting,  and  likewise  described  the  rank  which  the  pilot 
held  among  the  fraternity  of  steamboatmen,  this  seems  a 
fitting  place  to  say  a  few  words  about  an  organization  which 
the  pilots  once  formed  for  the  protection  of  their  guild.  It 
was  curious  and  noteworthy  in  this,  that  it  was  perhaps  the 
compactest,  the  completest,  and  the  strongest  commercial 
organization  ever  formed  among  men. 

For  a  long  time  wages  had  been  two  hundred  and  fifty 
dollars  a  month ;  but  curiously  enough,  as  steamboats  multi- 
plied and  business  increased,  the  wages  began  to  fall  little  by 


PILOTS  AND   CUBS. 


177 


little.  It  was  easy  to  discover  the  reason  of  this.  Too  many 
pilots  were  being  "  made."  It  was  nice  to  have  a  "  cub,"  a 
steersman,  to  do  all  the  hard  work  for  a  couple  of  years, 


gratis,  while  his  master  sat 
on  a  high  bench  and  smoked ; 
all  pilots  and  captains  had 
sons  or  nephews  who  wanted 
to  be  pilots.  By  and  by  it 
came  to  pass  that  nearly 
every  pilot  on  the  river  had  a  steersman.  When  a  steersman 
had  made  an  amount  of  progress  that  was  satisfactory  to  any 
two  pilots  in  the  trade,  they  could  get  a  pilot's  license  for  him 
by  signing  an  application  directed  to  the  United  States  In- 

12 


178  THE  PILOTS'  BENEVOLENT. 

spector.    Nothing  further  was  needed  ;  usually  no  questions 
were  asked,  no  proofs  of  capacity  required. 

Very  well,  this  growing  swarm  of  new  pilots  presently 
began  to  undermine  the  wages,  in  order  to  get  berths.  Too 
late  —  apparently  —  the  knights  of  the  tiller  perceived  their 
mistake.  Plainly,  something  had  to  be  done,  and  quickly ; 
but  what  was  to  be  the  needful  thing  ?  A  close  organization. 
Nothing  else  would  answer.  To  compass  this  seemed  an 
impossibility ;  so  it  was  talked,  and  talked,  and  then  dropped. 
It  was  too  likely  to  ruin  whoever  ventured  to  move  in  the 
matter.  But  at  last  about  a  dozen  of  the  boldest  —  and 
some  of  them  the  best  —  pilots  on  the  river  launched  them- 
selves into  the  enterprise  and  took  all  the  chances.  They 
got  a  special  charter  from  the  legislature,  with  large  powers, 
under  the  name  of  the  Pilots'  Benevolent  Association ; 
elected  their  officers,  completed  their  organization,  contrib- 
uted capital,  put  "  association  "  wages  up  to  two  hundred 
and  fifty  dollars  at  once  —  and  then  retired  to  their  homes, 
for  they  were  promptly  discharged  from  employment.  But 
there  were  two  or  three  unnoticed  trifles  in  their  by-laws 
which  had  the  seeds  of  propagation  in  them.  For  instance, 
all  idle  members  of  the  association,  in  good  standing,  were 
entitled  to  a  pension  of  twenty-five  dollars  per  month.  This 
began  to  bring  in  one  straggler  after  another  from  the  ranks 
of  the  new-fledged  pilots,  in  the  dull  (summer)  season. 
Better  have  twenty-five  dollars  than  starve ;  the  initiation  fee 
was  only  twelve  dollars,  and  no  dues  required  from  the 
unemployed. 

Also,  the  widows  of  deceased  members  jn  good  standing 
could  draw  twenty-five  dollars  per  month,  and  a  certain  sum 
for  each  of  their  children.  Also,  the  said  deceased  would  be 
buried  at  the  association's  expense.  These  things  resurrected 
all  the  superannuated  and  forgotten  pilots  in  the  Mississippi 
Valley.  They  came  from  farms,  they  came  from  interior  vil- 
lages, they  came  from  everywhere.  They  came  on  crutches, 
on  drays,  in  ambulances,  —  any  way,  so  they  got  there.    They 


THE   RESURRECTION. 


179 


paid  in  their  twelve  dollars,  and  straightway  began  to  draw  out 
twenty-five  dollars  a  month  and  calculate  their  burial  bills. 

By  and  by,  all  the  useless,  helpless  pilots,  and  a  dozen 
first-class  ones,  were  in  the  association,  and  nine  tenths  of 
the  best  pilots  out  of  it  and  laughing  at  it.  It  was  the 
laughing-stock  of  the  whole  river.     Everybody  joked  about 

the  by-law  requiring  mem- 
bers to  pay  ten  per  cent  of 
their  wages,  every  month, 
into  the  treasury  for  the 
support  of  the  association, 


whereas  all  the  members 
were  outcast  and  tabooed, 
and  no  one  would  employ 
them.  Everybody  was  deri- 
sively grateful  to  the  asso- 
ciation for  taking  all  the 
worthless   pilots   out   of   the 

way  and  leaving  the  whole  field  to  the  excellent  and  the 
deserving  ;  and  everybody  was  not  only  jocularly  grateful  for 
that,  but  for  a  result  which  naturally  followed,  namely,  the 
gradual  advance  of  wages  as  the  busy  season  approached. 
Wages  had  gone  up  from  the  low  figure  of  one  hundred  dol- 
lars a  month  to  one  hundred  and  twenty-five,  and  in  some 


180  A  LONG  LANE. 

cases  to  one  hundred  and  fifty ;  and  it  was  great  fun  to  en- 
large upon  the  fact  that  this  charming  thing  had  been  ac- 
complished by  a  body  of  men  not  one  of  whom  received 
a  particle  of  benefit  from  it.  Some  of  the  jokers  used  to 
call  at  the  association  rooms  and  have  a  good  time  chaff- 
ing the  members  and  offering  them  the  charity  of  taking 
them  as  steersmen  for  a  trip,  so  that  they  could  see  what  the 
forgotten  river  looked  like.  However,  the  association  was 
content ;  or  at  least  it  gave  no  sign  to  the  contrary.  Now  and 
then  it  captured  a  pilot  who  was  "  out  of  luck,"  and  added 
him  to  its  list ;  and  these  later  additions  were  very  valuable, 
for  they  were  good  pilots  ;  the  incompetent  ones  had  all  been 
absorbed  before.  As  business  freshened,  wages  climbed 
gradually  up  to  two  hundred  and  fifty  dollars  —  the  asso- 
ciation figure  —  and  became  firmly  fixed  there ;  and  still 
without  benefiting  a  member  of  that  body,  for  no  member 
was  hired.  The  hilarity  at  the  association's  expense  burst 
all  bounds,  now.  There  was  no  end  to  the  fun  which  that 
poor  martyr  had  to  put  up  with. 

However,  it  is  a  long  lane  that  has  no  turning.  Winter 
approached,  business  doubled  and  trebled,  and  an  avalanche 
of  Missouri,  Illinois,  and  Upper  Mississippi  River  boats  came 
pouring  down  to  take  a  chance  in  the  New  Orleans  trade. 
All  of  a  sudden,  pilots  were  in  great  demand,  and  were  cor- 
respondingly scarce.  The  time  for  revenge  was  come.  It 
was  a  bitter  pill  to  have  to  accept  association  pilots  at  last, 
yet  captains  and  owners  agreed  that  there  was  no  other  way. 
But  none  of  these  outcasts  offered!  So  there  was  a  still 
bitterer  pill  to  be  swallowed  :  they  must  be  sought  out  and 

asked  for  their  services.     Captain  was  the  first  man 

who  found  it  necessary  to  take  the  dose,  and  he  had  been 
the  loudest  derider  of  the  organization.  He  hunted  up  one 
of  the  best  of  the  association  pilots  and  said,  — 

"  Well,  you  boys  have  rather  got  the  best  of  us  for  a  little 
while,  so  I  '11  give  in  with  as  good  a  grace  as  I  can.  I  've  come 
to  hire  you ;  get  your  trunk  aboard  right  away.  I  want  to 
leave  at  twelve  o'clock." 


PLAY   OR  PAY.  181 

"  I  don't  know  about  that.     Who  is  your  other  pilot  ?  " 

"  I've  got  I.  S .     Why?" 

"  I  can't  go  with  him.  He  don't  belong  to  the  asso- 
ciation." 

"  What ! " 

"  It 's  so." 

"  Do  you  mean  to  tell  me  that  you  won't  turn  a  wheel 
with  one  of  the  very  best  and  oldest  pilots  on  the  river 
because  he  don't  belong  to  your  association  ? " 

"  Yes,  I  do." 

"  Well,  if  this  is  n't  putting  on  airs  !  I  supposed  I  was 
doing  you  a  benevolence  ;  but  I  begin  to  think  that  I  am 
the  party  that  wants  a  favor  done.  Are  you  acting  under 
a  law  of  the  concern  ? " 

"  Yes." 

"  Show  it  to  me." 

So  they  stepped  into  the  association  rooms,  and  the  sec- 
retary soon  satisfied  the  captain,  who  said,  — 

"  Well,  what  am  I  to  do  ?    I  have  hired  Mr.  S for  the 

entire  season." 

"I  will  provide  for  you,"  said  the  secretary.  "I  will 
detail  a  pilot  to  go  with  you,  and  he  shall  be  on  board  at 
twelve  o'clock." 

"  But  if  I  discharge  S ,  he  will  come  on  me  for  the 

whole  season's  wages." 

"  Of  course  that  is  a  matter  between  you  and  Mr.  S , 

captain.     We  cannot  meddle  in  your  private  affairs." 

The  captain  stormed,  but  to  no  purpose.     In  the  end  he 

had  to  discharge  S ,  pay  him  about  a  thousand  dollars, 

and  take  an  association  pilot  in  his  place.  The  laugh  was 
beginning  to  turn  the  other  way,  now.  Every  day,  thence- 
forward, a  new  victim  fell ;  every  day  some  outraged  captain 
discharged  a  non-association,  pet,  with  tears  and  profanity, 
and  installed  a  hated  association  man  in  his  berth.  In  a 
very  little  while,  idle  non-associationists  began  to  be  pretty 
plenty,  brisk  as  business  was,  and  much  as  their  services 


182 


A  SHORT  TRIUMPH. 


were  desired.  The  laugh  was  shifting  to  the  other  side  of 
their  mouths  most  palpably.  These  victims,  together  with 
the  captains  and  owners,  presently  ceased  to  laugh  alto- 
gether, and  began  to  rage  about  the  revenge  they  would 
take  when  the  passing  business  "  spurt "  was  over. 

Soon  all  the  laughers  that  were  left  were  the  owners  and 
crews  of  boats  that  had  two  non-association  pilots.  But  their 
triumph  was  not  very  long-lived.     For  this  reason  :  It  was  a 


THE    CAPTAIN   STORMED. 


rigid  rule  of  the  association  that  its  members  should  never, 
under  any  circumstances  whatever,  give  information  about 
the  channel  to  any  "  outsider."  By  this  time  about  half  the 
boats  had  none  but  association  pilots,  and  the  other  half  had 
none  but  outsiders.     At  the  first  glance  one  would  suppose 


S  • 


RIGID  RULES. 


183 


that  when  it  came  to  forbidding  information  about  the  river 
these  two  parties  could  play  equally  at  that  game ;  but  this 
was  not  so.  At  every  good-sized  town  from  one  end  of  the 
river  to  the  other,  there  was  a  "  wharf-boat "  to  land  at, 
instead  of  a  wharf  or  a  pier.  Freight  was  stored  in  it  for 
transportation ;  waiting  passengers  slept  in  its  cabins.   Upon 


THE   SIGN   OF   MEMBERSHIP. 

each  of  these  wharf-boats 
the  association's   officers 
placed  a  strong  box,  fast- 
ened with  a  peculiar  lock 
which    was   used    in    no 
other  service  but  one  —  the  United  States  mail  service.    It 
was  the  letter-bag  lock,  a  sacred  governmental  thing.     By 
dint  of  much  beseeching  the  government  had  been  persuaded 


184  TRIP  REPORTS. 

to  allow  the  association  to  use  this  lock.  Every  association 
man  carried  a  key  which  would  open  these  boxes.  That  key, 
or  rather  a  peculiar  way  of  holding  it  in  the  hand  when  its 
owner  was  asked  for  river  information  by  a  stranger,  —  for 
the  success  of  the  St.  Louis  and  New  Orleans  association 
had  now  bred  tolerably  thriving  branches  in  a  dozen  neigh- 
boring steamboat  trades,  —  was  the  association  man's  sign 
and  diploma  of  membership ;  and  if  the  stranger  did  not 
respond  by  producing  a  similar  key  and  holding  it  in  a 
certain  manner  duly  prescribed,  his  question  was  politely 
ignored.  From  the  association's  secretary  each  member 
received  a  package  of  more  or  less  gorgeous  blanks,  printed 
like  a  bill-head,  on  handsome  paper,  properly  ruled  in  col- 
umns; a  bill-head  worded  something  like  this:  — 

STEAMER  GREAT  REPUBLIC. 

John  Smith,  Master. 

Pilots,  John  Jones  and  Thomas  Drown. 


Crossings. 

Soundings.                        Marks. 

Remarks. 

These  blanks  were  filled  up,  day  by  day,  as  the  voyage 
progressed,  and  deposited  in  the  several  wharf-boat  boxes. 
For  instance,  as  soon  as  the  first  crossing,  out  from  St. 
Louis,  was  completed,  the  items  would  be  entered  upon  the 
blank,  under  the  appropriate  headings,  thus  :  — 

"  St.  Louis.  Nine  and  a  half  (feet).  Stern  on  court- 
house, head  on  dead  cottonwood  above  wood-yard,  until 
you  raise  the  first  reef,  then  pull  up  square."  Then  under 
head  of  Remarks :  "  Go  just  outside  the  wrecks  ;  this  is  im- 
portant. New  snag  just  where  you  straighten  down ;  go 
above  it." 

The  pilot  who  deposited  that  blank  in  the  Cairo  box  (af- 
ter adding  to  it  the  details  of  every  crossing  all  the  way 
down  from  St.  Louis)  took  out  and  read  half  a  dozen  fresh 
reports  (from  upward-bound  steamers)  concerning  the  river 


AN  ADMIRABLE   SYSTEM.  185 

between  Cairo  and  Memphis,  posted  himself  thoroughly,  re- 
turned them  to  the  box,  and  went  back  aboard  his  boat  again 
so  armed  against  accident  that  he  could  not  possibly  get  his 
boat  into  trouble  without  bringing  the  most  ingenious  care- 
lessness to  his  aid. 

Imagine  the  benefits  of  so  admirable  a  system  in  a  piece  of 
river  twelve  or  thirteen  hundred  miles  long,  whose  channel 
was  shifting  every  day !  The  pilot  who  had  formerly  been 
obliged  to  put  up  with  seeing  a  shoal  place  once  or  possibly 
twice  a  month,  had  a  hundred  sharp  eyes  to  watch  it  for  him, 
now,  and  bushels  of  intelligent  brains  to  tell  him  how  to  run 
it.  His  information  about  it  was  seldom  twenty-four  hours 
old.  If  the  reports  in  the  last  box  chanced  to  leave  any  mis- 
givings on  his  mind  concerning  a  treacherous  crossing,  he 
had  his  remedy  ;  he  blew  his  steam-whistle  in  a  peculiar  way 
as  soon  as  he  saw  a  boat  approaching ;  the  signal  was  an- 
swered in  a  peculiar  way  if  that  boat's  pilots  were  associa- 
tion men  ;  and  then  the  two  steamers  ranged  alongside  and 
all  uncertainties  were  swept  away  by  fresh  information 
furnished  to  the  inquirer  by  word  of  mouth  and  in  minute 
detail. 

The  first  thing  a  pilot  did  when  he  reached  New  Orleans  or 
St.  Louis  was  to  take  his  final  and  elaborate  report  to  the 
association  parlors  and  hang  it  up  there,  —  after  which  he 
was  free  to  visit  his  family.  In  these  parlors  a  crowd  was 
always  gathered  together,  discussing  changes  in  the  channel, 
and  the  moment  there  was  a  fresh  arrival,  everybody  stopped 
talking  till  this  witness  had  told  the  newest  news  and  settled 
the  latest  uncertainty.  Other  craftsmen  can  "  sink  the  shop," 
sometimes,  and  interest  themselves  in  other  matters.  Not 
so  with  a  pilot ;  he  must  devote  himself  wholly  to  his  pro- 
fession and  talk  of  nothing  else  ;  for  it  would  be  small  gain 
to  be  perfect  one  day  and  imperfect  the  next.  He  has  no 
time  or  words  to  waste  if  he  would  keep  "  posted." 

But  the  outsiders  had  a  hard  time  of  it.  No  particular 
place  to  meet  and  exchange  information,  no  wharf-boat  re- 


186 


A   LOGICAL   RESULT. 


ports,  none  but  chance  and  unsatisfactory  ways  of  getting 
news.  The  consequence  was  that  a  man  sometimes  had  to 
run  five  hundred  miles  of  river  on  information  that  was  a 
week  or  ten  days  old.  At  a  fair  stage  of  the  river  that 
might  have  answered ;  but  when  the  dead  low  water  came  it 
was  destructive. 


Now 
came  anoth- 
er perfectly  logi- 
/i-H^  cal  result.  The  out- 
siders began  to  ground 
steamboats,  sink  them,  and  get 
into  all  sorts  of  trouble,  whereas 
accidents  seemed  to  keep  entirely 
away  from  the  association  men.  Wherefore  even  the  owners 
and  captains  of  boats  furnished  exclusively  with  outsiders, 
and  previously  considered  to  be  wholly  independent  of  the 


POSTING    HIS   REPORT. 


THE   UNDERWRITERS   STEP  IN.  187 

association  and  free  to  comfort  themselves  with  brag  and 
laughter,  began  to  feel  pretty  uncomfortable.  Still,  they 
made  a  show  of  keeping  up  the  brag,  until  one  black  day 
when  every  captain  of  the  lot  was  formally  ordered  to  imme- 
diately discharge  his  outsiders  and  take  association  pilots  in 
their  stead.  And  who  was  it  that  had  the  dashing  presump- 
tion to  do  that  ?  Alas,  it  came  from  a  power  behind  the 
throne  that  was  greater  than  the  throne  itself.  It  was  the 
underwriters ! 

It  was  no  time  to  "  swap  knives."  Every  outsider  had  to 
take  his  trunk  ashore  at  once.  Of  course  it  was  supposed 
that  there  was  collusion  between  the  association  and  the  un- 
derwriters, but  this  was  not  so.  The  latter  had  come  to  com- 
prehend the  excellence  of  the  "  report "  system  of  the  associ- 
ation and  the  safety  it  secured,  and  so  they  had  made  their 
decision  among  themselves  and  upon  plain  business  princi- 
ples. 

There  was  weeping  and  wailing  and  gnashing  of  teeth  in 
the  camp  of  the  outsiders  now.  But  no  matter,  there  was 
but  one  course  for  them  to  pursue,  and  they  pursued  it. 
They  came  forward  in  couples  and  groups,  and  proffered  their 
twelve  dollars  and  asked  for  membership.  They  were  sur- 
prised to  learn  that  several  new  by-laws  had  been  long  ago 
added.  For  instance,  the  initiation  fee  had  been  raised  to 
fifty  dollars ;  that  sum  must  be  tendered,  and  also  ten  per 
cent  of  the  wages  which  the  applicant  had  received  each  and 
every  month  since  the  founding  of  the  association.  In  many 
cases  this  amounted  to  three  or  four  hundred  dollars.  Still, 
the  association  would  not  entertain  the  application  until  the 
money  was  present.  Even  then  a  single  adverse  vote  killed 
the  application.  Every  member  had  to  vote  yes  or  no  in  per- 
son and  before  witnesses  ;  so  it  took  weeks  to  decide  a 
candidacy,  because  many  pilots  were  so  long  absent  on 
voyages.  However,  the  repentant  sinners  scraped  their  sav- 
ings together,  and  one  by  one,  by  our  tedious  voting  process, 
they  were  added  to  the  fold.     A  time  came,  at  last,  when 


188 


COSTS   MORE   TO   COME   IN. 


only  about  ten  remained  outside.  They  said  they  would 
starve  before  they  would  apply.  They  remained  idle  a  long 
while,  because  of  course  nobody  could  venture  to  employ 
them. 

By  and  by  the  association  pub- 
lished the  fact  that  upon  a  cer- 
tain date  the  wages 
would  be  raised  to 
five  hundred  dol- 
lars per  month.  All 
the  branch  associa- 
tions  had  grown 
strong,  now,  and  the  Red  River 
one  had  advanced  wages  to  seven 
hundred  dollars  a  month.  Re- 
luctantly the  ten  outsiders  yield- 
ed, in  view  of  these 
things,  and  made 
application.  There 
was  another'  new 
by-law,  by  this  time, 
which  required  them 
to  pay  dues  not  only 
on  all  the  wages  they 
had  received  since  the  asso 
ciation  was  born,  but  also 
on  what  they  would  have 
received  if  they  had  con- 
tinued at  work  up  to  the  time 
of  their  application,  instead  of 
going  off  to  pout  in  idleness.  It 
turned  out  to  be  a  difficult  mat- 
ter to  elect  them,  but  it  was  accomplished  at  last.  The  most 
virulent  sinner  of  this  batch  had  stayed  out  and  allowed  "dues  " 
to  accumulate  against  him  so  long  that  he  had  to  send  in  six 
hundred  and  twenty-five  dollars  with  his  application. 


ADDED    TO    THE    FOLD. 


A   GRAND   SUCCESS.  1^9 

The  association  had  a  good  bank  account  now,  and  was 
very  strong.  There  was  no  longer  an  outsider.  A  by-law 
was  added  forbidding  the  reception  of  any  more  cubs  or  ap- 
prentices for  live  years  ;  after  which  time  a  limited  number 
would  be  taken,  not  by  individuals,  but  by  the  association,  upon 
these  terms :  the  applicant  must  not  be  less  than  eighteen 
years  old,  and  of  respectable  family  and  good  character  ;  he 
must  pass  an  examination  as  to  education,  pay  a  thousand 
dollars  in  advance  for  the  privilege  of  becoming  an  appren- 
tice, and  must  remain  under  the  commands  of  the  associa- 
tion until  a  great  part  of  the  membership  (more  than  half,  I 
think)  should  be  willing  to  sign  his  application  for  a  pilot's 
license. 

All  previously-articled  apprentices  were  now  taken  away 
from  their  masters  and  adopted  by  the  association.  The 
president  and  secretary  detailed  them  for  service  on  one  boat 
or  another,  as  they  chose,  and  changed  them  from  boat  to 
boat  according  to  certain  rules.  If  a  pilot  could  show  that 
he  was  in  infirm  health  and  needed  assistance,  one  of  the 
cubs  would  be  ordered  to  go  with  him. 

The  widow  and  orphan  list  grew,  but  so  did  the  associa- 
tion's financial  resources.  The  association  attended  its  own 
funerals  in  state,  and  paid  for  them.  When  occasion  de- 
manded, it  sent  members  down  the  river  upon  searches  for 
the  bodies  of  brethren  lost  by  steamboat  accidents  ;  a  search 
of  this  kind  sometimes  cost  a  thousand  dollars. 

The  association  procured  a  charter  and  went  into  the  in- 
surance business,  also.  It  not  only  insured  the  lives  of  its 
members,  but  took  risks  on  steamboats. 

The  organization  seemed  indestructible.  It  was  the  tight- 
est monopoly  in  the  world.  By  the  United  States  law,  no 
man  could  become  a  pilot  unless  two  duly  licensed  pilots 
signed  his  application  ;  and  now  there  was  nobody  outside 
of  the  association  competent  to  sign.  Consequently  the 
making  of  pilots  was  at  an  end.  Every  year  some  would 
die  and  others  become  incapacitated  by  age  and  infirmity  ; 


190 


THE  LAST   OBSTRUCTION. 


there  would  be  no  new  ones  to  take  their  places.  In  time, 
the  association  could  put  wages  up  to  any  figure  it  chose  ; 
and  as  long  as  it  should  be  wise  enough  not  to  carry  the 
thing  too  far  and  provoke  the  national  government  into 
amending  the  licensing  system,  steamboat  owners  would 
have  to  submit,  since  there  would  be  no  help  for  it. 


A   JUSTIFIABLE   ADVANCE. 

The  owners  and  captains  were 
the  only  obstruction  that  lay  be- 
tween the  association  and  abso- 
lute power ;  and  at  last  this  one  was  removed.  Incredible 
as  it  may  seem,  the  owners  and  captains  deliberately  did  it 
themselves.  When  the  pilots'  association  announced,  months 
beforehand,  that  on  the  first  day  of  September,  1861,  wages 
would  be  advanced  to  five  hundred  dollars  per  month,  the 


FINES   AND   ADVANCES.  191 

owners  and  captains  instantly  put  freights  up  a  few  cents,  and 
explained  to  the  farmers  along  the  river  the  necessity  of  it, 
by  calling  their  attention  to  the  burdensome  rate  of  wages 
about  to  be  established.  It  was  a  rather  slender  argument, 
but  the  farmers  did  not  seem  to  detect  it.  It  looked  reason- 
able to  them  that  to  add  live  cents  freight  on  a  bushel  of 
corn  was  justifiable  under  the  circumstances,  overlooking  the 
fact  that  this  advance  on  a  cargo  of  forty  thousand  sacks 
was  a  good  deal  more  than  necessary  to  cover  the  new 
wages. 

So,  straightway  the  captains  and  owners  got  up  an  associ- 
ation of  their  own,  and  proposed  to  put  captains'  wages  up  to 
five  hundred  dollars,  too,  and  move  for  another  advance  in 
freights.  It  was  a  novel  idea,  but  of  course  an  effect  which 
had  been  produced  once  could  be  produced  again.  The  new 
association  decreed  (for  this  was  before  all  the  outsiders  had 
been  taken  into  the  pilots'  association)  that  if  any  captain 
employed  a  non-association  pilot,  he  should  be  forced  to  dis- 
charge him,  and  also  pay  a  fine  of  five  hundred  dollars. 
Several  of  these  heavy  fines  were  paid  before  the  captains' 
organization  grew  strong  enough  to  exercise  full  authority 
over  its  membership  ;  but  that  all  ceased,  presently.  The 
captains  tried  to  get  the  pilots  to  decree  that  no  member  of 
their  corporation  should  serve  under  a  non-association  cap- 
tain ;  but  this  proposition  was  declined.  The  pilots  saw 
that  they  would  be  backed  up  by  the  captains  and  the  under- 
writers anyhow,  and  so  they  wisely  refrained  from  entering 
into  entangling  alliances. 

As  I  have  remarked,  the  pilots'  association  was  now  the 
compactest  monopoly  in  the  world,  perhaps,  and  seemed 
simply  indestructible.  And  yet  the  days  of  its  glory  were 
numbered.  First,  the  new  railroad  stretching  up  through 
Mississippi,  Tennessee,  and  Kentucky,  to  Northern  railway 
centres,  began  to  divert  the  passenger  travel  from  the  steam- 
ers ;  next  the  war  came  and  almost  entirely  annihilated  the 
steamboating  industry  during  several  years,  leaving  most  of 


192 


A  VULGAR   DIVERSION. 


the  pilots  idle,  and  the  cost  of  living  advancing  all  the  time  ; 
then  the  treasurer  of  the  St.  Louis  association  put  his  hand 
into  the  till  and  walked  off  with  every  dollar  of  the  ample 
fund  ;  and  finally,  the  railroads  intruding  everywhere,  there 
was  little  for  steamers  to  do,  when  the  war  was  over,  but 
carry  freights  ;  so  straightway  some  genius  from  the  Atlan- 
tic coast'  introduced  the  plan  of  towing  a  dozen  steamer 
cargoes  down  to  New  Orleans  at  the  tail  of  a  vulgar  little 
tug-boat ;  and  behold,  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye,  as  it  were, 
the  association  and  the  noble  science  of  piloting  were  things 
of  the  dead  and  pathetic  past ! 


CHAPTER  XVI. 

RACING  DAYS. 

IT  was  always  the  custom  for  the  boats  to  leave  New  Or- 
leans between  four  and  five  o'clock  in  the  afternoon. 
From  three  o'clock  onward  they  would  be  burning  rosin  and 
pitch  pine  (the  sign  of  preparation),  and  so  one  had  the 
picturesque  spectacle  of  a  rank,  some  two  or  three  miles 
long,  of  tall,  ascending  columns  of  coal-black  smoke  ;  a  col- 
onnade which  supported  a  sable  roof  of  the  same  smoke 
blended  together  and  spreading  abroad  over  the  city.  Every 
outward-bound  boat  had  its  flag  flying  at  the  jack-staff,  and 
sometimes  a  duplicate  on  the  verge  staff  astern.  Two  or 
three  miles  of  mates  were  commanding  and  swearing  with 
more  than  usual  emphasis  ;  countless  processions  of  freight 
barrels  and  boxes  were  spinning  athwart  the  levee  and  flying 
aboard  the  stage-planks  ;  belated  passengers  were  dodging 
and  skipping  among  these  frantic  things,  hoping  to  reach 
the  forecastle  companion  way  alive,  but  having  their  doubts 
about  it ;  women  with  reticules  and  bandboxes  were  trying 
to  keep  up  with  husbands  freighted  with  carpet-sacks  and 
crying  babies,  and  making  a  failure  of  it  by  losing  their 
heads  in  the  whirl  and  roar  and  general  distraction  ;  drays 
and  baggage-vans  were  clattering  hither  and  thither  in  a 
wild  hurry,  every  now  and  then  getting  blocked  and  jammed 
together,  and  then  during  ten  seconds  one  could  not  see 
them  for  the  profanity,  except  vaguely  and  dimly  ;  every 
windlass  connected  with  every  fore-hatch,  from  one  end  of 
that  long  array  of  steamboats  to  the  other,  was  keeping  up 


194  STARTING   TIME. 

a  deafening  whiz  and  whir,  lowering  freight  into  the  hold, 
and  the  half-naked  crews  of  perspiring  negroes  that  worked 
them  were  roaring  such  songs  as  "  De  Las'  Sack  !  De  Las' 
Sack  !  " — inspired  to  unimaginable  exaltation  by  the  chaos  of 
turmoil  and  racket  that  was  driving  everybody  else  mad.  By 
this  time,,  the  hurricane  and  boiler  decks  of  the  steamers 
would  be  packed  and  black  with  passengers.  The  "  last 
bells  "  would  begin  to  clang,  all  down  the  line,  and  then  the 
powwow  seemed  to  double  ;  in  a  moment  or  two  the  final 
warning  came, —  a  simultaneous  din  of  Chinese  gongs,  with 
the  cry,  "  All  dat  ain't  goin',  please  to  git  asho'  !  "  —  and 
behold,  the  powwow  quadrupled  !  People  came  swarming 
ashore,  overturning  excited  stragglers  that  were  trying  to 
swarm  aboard.  One  more  moment  later  a  long  array  of 
stage-planks  was  being  hauled  in,  each  with  its  customary 
latest  passenger  clinging  to  the  end  of  it  with  teeth,  nails, 
and  everything  else,  and  the  customary  latest  procrastina- 
tor  making  a  wild  spring  shoreward  over  his  head. 

Now  a  number  of  the  boats  slide  backward  into  the  stream, 
leaving  wide  gaps  in  the  serried  rank  of  steamers.  Citizens 
crowd  the  decks  of  boats  that  are  not  to  go,  in  order  to  see 
the  sight.  Steamer  after  steamer  straightens  herself  up, 
gathers  all  her  strength,  and  presently  comes  swinging  by, 
under  a  tremendous  head  of  steam,  with  flag  flying,  black 
smoke  rolling,  and  her  entire  crew  of  firemen  and  deck-hands 
(usually  swarthy  negroes)  massed  together  on  the  forecastle, 
the  best  "  voice  "  in  the  lot  towering  from  the  midst  (being 
mounted  on  the  capstan),  waving  his  hat  or  a  flag,  and  all 
roaring  a  mighty  chorus,  while  the  parting  cannons  boom 
and  the  multitudinous  spectators  swing  their  hats  and  huzza ! 
Steamer  after  steamer  falls  into  line,  and  the  stately  proces- 
sion goes  winging  its  flight  up  the  river. 

In  the  old  times,  whenever  two  fast  boats  started  out  on  a 
race,  with  a  big  crowd  of  people  looking  on,  it  was  inspiring 
to  hear  the  crews  sing,  especially  if  the  time  vcre  night-fall, 
and  the  forecastle  lit  up  with  the  red  glare  of  the  torch-baskets. 


STEAMBOAT  TIME. 


RACING   AND   DROWSING. 


197 


Racing  was  royal  fun.  The  public  always  had  an  idea  that 
racing  was  dangerous  ;  whereas  the  opposite  was  the  case — 
that  is,  after  the  laws  were  passed  which  restricted  each 
boat  to  just  so  many  pounds  of  steam  to  the  square  inch. 
No  engineer  was  ever  sleepy  or  careless  when  his  heart  was 
in  a  race.  He 
was  constantly 
on  the  alert,  try- 
ing gauge-cocks 
and  watching 
things.  The 
dangerous  place 
was  on  slow, 
plodding  boats, 
where  the  en- 
gineers drowsed 
around  and  al- 
lowed chips  to 
get  into  the 
"doctor"  and 
shut  off  the 
water  supply 
from  the  boil- 
ers. 

In  the  "  flush 
times"  of  steam- 
boating,  a  race  between  two  notoriously  fleet  steamers  was 
an  event  of  vast  importance.  The  date  was  set  for  it  several 
weeks  in  advance,  and  from  that  time  forward,  the  whole 
Mississippi  Valley  was  in  a  state  of  consuming  excitement. 
Politics  and  the  weather  were  dropped,  and  people  talked 
only  of  the  coming  race.  As  the  time  approached,  the  two 
steamers  "  stripped "  and  got  ready.  Every  incumbrance 
that  added  weight,  or  exposed  a  resisting  surface  to  wind  or 
water,  was  removed,  if  the  boat  could  possibly  do  without  it. 
The  "  spars,"  and  sometimes  even  their  supporting  derricks, 


DROWSY   ENGINEERS. 


^98  TRIMMED   TO   A  BALANCE. 

were  sent  ashore,  and  no  means  left  to  set  the  boat  afloat  in 
case  she  got  aground.  When  the  "  Eclipse  "  and  the  "  A.  L. 
Shotwell "  ran  their  great  race  many  years  ago,  it  was  said 
that  pains  were  taken  to  scrape  the  gilding  off  the  fanciful 
device  which  hung  between  the  "  Eclipse's  "  chimneys,  and 
that  for  that  one  trip  the  captain  left  off  his  kid  gloves  and 
had  his  head  shaved.     But  I  always  doubted  these  things. 

If  the  boat  was  known  to  make  her  best  speed  when 
drawing  five  and  a  half  feet  forward  and  five  feet  aft,  she 
was  carefully  loaded  to  that  exact  figure  —  she  wouldn't 
enter  a  dose  of  homoeopathic  pills  on  her  manifest  after  that. 
Hardly  any  passengers  were  taken,  because  they  not  only  add 
weight  but  they  never  will  "  trim  boat."  They  always  run 
to  the  side  when  there  is  anything  to  see,  whereas  a  conscien- 
tious and  experienced  steamboatman  would  stick  to  the 
centre  of  the  boat  and  part  his  hair  in  the  middle  with  a 
spirit  level. 

No  way-freights  and  no  way-passengers  were  allowed,  for 
the  racers  would  stop  only  at  the  largest  towns,  and  then  it 
would  be  only  "  touch  and  go."  Coal  flats  and  wood  flats 
were  contracted  for  beforehand,  and  these  were  kept  ready 
to  hitch  on  to  the  flying  steamers  at  a  moment's  warning. 
Double  crews  were  carried,  so  that  all  work  could  be  quickly 
done. 

The  chosen  date  being  come,  and  all  things  in  readiness, 
the  two  great  steamers  back  into  the  stream,  and  lie  there 
jockeying  a  moment,  and  apparently  watching  each  other's 
slightest  movement,  like  sentient  creatures  ;  flags  drooping, 
the  pent  steam  shrieking  through  safety-valves,  the  black 
smoke  rolling  and  tumbling  from  the  chimneys  and  darkening 
all  the  air.  People,  people  everywhere ;  the  shores,  the 
house-tops,  the  steamboats,  the  ships,  are  packed  with  them, 
and  you  know  that  the  borders  of  the  broad  Mississippi  are 
going  to  be  fringed  with  humanity  thence  northward  twelve 
hundred  miles,  to  welcome  these  racers. 

Presently  tall   columns  of   steam  burst  from  the  'scape- 


THE  PARTING   GUN. 


199 


pipes  of  both  steamers,  two  guns  boom  a  good-by,  two 
red-shirted  heroes  mounted  on  capstans  wave  their  small 
flags  above  the  massed  crews  on  the  forecastles,  two  plaintive 


^-^T^-^ES     /fV 


solos  linger  on 
the  air  a  few 
waiting  seconds, 
two  mighty 
choruses  burst 
forth  —  and 
here  they  come  1 
Brass  bands 
bray  Hail  Co- 
lumbia, huzza 
after      huzza 

thunders   from   the    shores,   and   the   stately  creatures   go 

whistling  by  like  the  wind. 
Those  boats  will  never  halt  a  moment  between  New  Orleans 


BBASS   BANDS   BRAY. 


200  A  CLOSE   MATCH. 

and  St.  Louis,  except  for  a  second  or  two  at  large  towns,  or 
to  hitch  thirty-cord  wood-boats  alongside.  You  should  be  on 
board  when  they  take  a  couple  of  those  wood-boats  in  tow 
and  turn  a  swarm  of  men  into  each ;  by  the  time  you  have 
wiped  your  glasses  and  put  them  on,  you  will  be  wondering 
what  has  become  of  that  wood. 

Two  nicely  matched  steamers  will  stay  in  sight  of  each 
other  day  after  day.  They  might  even  stay  side  by  side,  but 
for  the  fact  that  pilots  are  not  all  alike,  and  the  smartest 
pilots  will  win  the  race.  If  one  of  the  boats  has  a  "  light- 
ning "  pilot,  whose  "  partner  "  is  a  trifle  his  inferior,  you  can 
tell  which  one  is  on  watch  by  noting  whether  that  boat  has 
gained  ground  or  lost  some  during  each  four-hour  stretch. 
The  shrewdest  pilot  can  delay  a  boat  if  he  has  not  a  fine 
genius  for  steering.  Steering  is  a  very  high  art.  One  must 
not  keep  a  rudder  dragging  across  a  boat's  stern  if  he  wants 
to  get  up  the  river  fast. 

There  is  a  great  difference  in  boats,  of  course.  For  a  long 
time  I  was  on  a  boat  that  was  so  slow  we  used  to  forget  what 
year  it  was  we  left  port  in.  But  of  course  this  was  at  rare 
intervals.  Ferry-boats  used  to  lose  valuable  trips  because 
their  passengers  grew  old  and  died,  waiting  for  us  to  get  by. 
This  was  at  still  rarer  intervals.  I  had  the  documents  for 
these  occurrences,  but  through  carelessness  they  have  been 
mislaid.  This  boat,  the  "  John  J.  Roe,"  was  so  slow  that 
when  she  finally  sunk  in  Madrid  Bend,  it  was  five  years 
before  the  owners  heard  of  it.  That  was  always  a  confusing 
fact  to  me,  but  it  is  according  to  the  record,  any  way.  She 
was  dismally  slow ;  still,  we  often  had  pretty  exciting  times 
racing  with  islands,  and  rafts,  and  such  things.  One  trip, 
however,  we  did  rather  well.  We  went  to  St.  Louis  in 
sixteen  days.  But  even  at  this  rattling  gait  I  think  we 
changed  watches  three  times  in  Fort  Adams  reach,  which  is 
five  miles  long.  A  "  reach  "  is  a  piece  of  straight  river,  and 
of  course  the  current  drives  through  such  a  place  in  a  pretty 
lively  way. 


THE   PARTING  CHORUS. 


201 


That  trip 
we  went  to 
Grand    Gulf, 
from  New  Or- 
leans,    in    four 
days  (three  hun- 
dred   and    forty 
miles);    the 
"Eclipse"   and   "  Shotwell  "  did  it  in  one.     We  were  nine 
days  out,  in   the  chute  of  63  (seven  hundred  miles)  ;  the 


THE   PARTING   CHORUS. 


202 


SOME   SHORT   TRIPS. 


"  Eclipse  "  and  "  Shotwell  "  went  there  in  two  days.  Some- 
thing over  a  generation  ago,  a  boat  called  the  "  J.  M. 
White  "  went  from  New  Orleans  to  Cairo  in  three  days,  six 
hours,  and  forty-four  minutes.  In  1853  the  "Eclipse"  made 
the  same  trip  in  three  days,  three  hours,  and  twenty 
minutes.1  In  1870  the  "  R.  E.  Lee  "  did  it  in  three  days  and 
one  hour.  'This  last  is  called  the  fastest  trip  on  record.  I 
will  try  to  show  that  it  was  not.  For  this  reason  :  the 
distance  between  New  Orleans  and  Cairo,  when  the  "  J.  M. 
White "  ran  it,  was  about  eleven  hundred  and  six  miles  ; 
consequently  her  average  speed  was  a  trifle  over  fourteen 
miles  per  hour.  In  the  "  Eclipse's"  day  the  distance  between 
the  two  ports  had  become  reduced  to  one  thousand  and  eighty 
miles  ;  consequently  her  average  speed  was  a  shade  under 
fourteen  and  three  eighths  miles  per  hour.  In  the  "R.  E. 
Lee's "  time  the  distance  had  diminished  to  about  one 
thousand  and  thirty  miles ;  consequently  her  average  was 
about  fourteen  and  one  eighth  miles  per  hour.  Therefore 
the  "  Eclipse's  "  was  conspicuously  the  fastest  time  that  has 
ever  been  made. 


THE   RECORD   OF   SOME   FAMOUS   TRIPS. 

{From  Commodore  Rollingpin's  Almanac] 
FAST   TIME   ON   THE  WESTERN  WATERS. 


FROM   NEW   ORLEANS   TO   NATCHEZ  — 268  MILES. 


1814.  Orleans  made  the  run  in    6 

1814.  Comet  „ 

1815.  Enterprise  ,, 
1817.  Washington  ,, 
1817.  Shelby  ,, 
1819.  Paragon  „ 
1828.  Tecumseh  „ 
1S34.  Tuscarora  „ 
1838.  Natchez  „ 
1840.  Ed.  Shippen  „ 
1842.  Belle  of  the  West 


i  in    6 

6 

40 

1844. 

Sultana  .  .  made  the  run  in 

10 

45 

„       5 

10 

1851. 

Magnolia               ,,            ,, 

19 

50 

»       4 

11 

20 

1853. 

A.  L.  Shotwell      „             „ 

19 

49 

..       4 

1853. 

Southern  Belle     ,,            ,, 

20 

3 

,       3 

20 

1853. 

Princess  (No.  4)  ,,             „ 

20 

26 

»       3 

8 

1853. 

Eclipse                   „             „ 

19 

47 

,       3 

1 

20 

1855. 

Princess  (New)     ,,             „ 

IS 

53 

1 

21 

ia55. 

Natchez  (New)      ,,            ,, 

17 

30 

,,      1 

17 

1856. 

Princess  (New)     „             „ 

17 

30 

»       1 

8 

1870. 

Natehez                 ,, 

17 

17 

o       1 

18 

1870. 

R.  E.  Lee             „           „ 

17 

11 

1  Time  disputed.     Some  authorities  add  1  hour  and  10  minutes  to  this. 


FAST   TIMES. 


203 


Time    Tables. —  Continued. 


FROM   NEW  ORLEANS   TO   CAIRO  — 1,024  MILES. 


1844. 
1852. 
1853. 

1853. 


1815. 
1817. 
1817. 
1819. 
1828. 
1834. 
1837. 
1837. 
1837. 
1837. 


D. 

H. 

m 

J.  M.  White  made  the  run  iu  3 

6 

44 

1869. 

Dexter  . 

Reindeer                ,,            „       3 

12 

45 

1870. 

Natchez 

Eclipse                   „            „       3 

4 

4 

1870. 

R.  E.  Lee 

A.  L.  Shotwell      ,,            ,,       3 

3 

40 

.  made  the  run  in 


FROM  NEW  ORLEANS   TO   LOUISVILLE  — 1,440  MILES. 


Enterprise  made  the  run  in  25      2    40 


Washington 

Shelby 

Paragon 

Tecumseh 

Tuscarora 

Gen.  Brown 

Randolph 

Empress 

Sultana 


25 

20 

4 

18 

10 

8 

4 

7 

16 

6 

22 

6 

22 

6 

17 

20 


6    15 


1840.  Ed.  Shippen  made  the  run  in 

1842.  Belle  of  the  West, 

1843.  Duke  of  Orleans 

1844.  Sultana 
1849.  Bostona 

1851.  Belle  Key 

1852.  Reindeer 

1852.  Eclipse 

1853.  A.  L.  Shotwell 
1853.  Eclipse 


I).     H. 

3      6 


5  14 

6  14 


23 
12 

8 

23 

20    45 
19 
10    20 

9    30 


FROM  NEW   ORLEANS   TO  DONALDSVILLE  —  78  MILES. 


1852.  A.  L.  Shotwell  made  the  run  in  5  42 

1852.  Eclipse                       „            „  5  42 

1854.  Sultana                     „            „  5  12 

1856.  Princess  4  51 


1860.  Atlantic  .  .  .  made  the  run  in  5  11 

1860.  Gen.  Quitman           „            „  5  6 

1865.  Ruth                         ,,            ,,  4  43 

1870.  R.E.Lee                  „            ,,  4  59 


FROM  NEW  ORLEANS   TO   ST.    LOUIS  — 1,218  MILES. 


1844.    J.  M.  White  made  the  run  in  3     23 
1849.     Missouri  ,,  4     19 

1869.    Dexter  „  „     4       9 


1870. 
1870. 


Natchez  . 
R.  E.  Lee 


made  the  run  in  3     21    58 
,,     3     18    14 


FROM   LOUISVILLE  TO   CINCINNATI —141   MILES. 


1819.  Gen.  Pike  made  the  run  in  1 

1819.  Paragon  „  „       1 

1822.  Wheeling  Packet  „  „       1 

1837.  Moselle  „ 

1843.  Duke  of  Orleans  „ 


H.      M. 

16 

14    20 
10 
12 
12 


1843.  Congress  .  .  made  the  run  in 

1846.  Ben  Franklin  (No.  6)  „ 

1852.  Alleghaney  „  „ 

1852.  Pittsburgh      ,,     „ 

1853.  Telegraph  No.  3  ,,     ,, 


H.  M. 

12  20 

11  45 

10  38 

10  23 

9  52 


1843. 
1854. 


FROM  LOUISVILLE   TO   ST.   LOUIS  —  750  MILES. 


Congress  .  .  made  the  run  in    2 
Pike  „  ,,         1 


D.      H.     M. 


1854. 
1855. 


Northerner  made  the  run  in  1    22 
Southerner  ,,  „         1     19 


FROM   CINCINNATI  TO   PITTSBURG  — 490  MILES. 


1850.  Telegraph  No.  2  made  the  run  in    1    17    1852.     Pittsburgh 

1851.  Buckeye  State  ,,  „         1    16  I 


made  the  run  in    1    15 


FROM   ST.    LOUIS   TO   ALTON  —  30   MILES. 


1853.     Altona made  the  run  in    1    35    1876.     War  Eagle 

1876.     Golden  Eagle  „  „        1    37  I 


H.    M. 

.  made  the  run  in    1    37 


MISCELLANEOUS   RUNS. 

In  June,  1859,  the  St.  Louis  and  Keokuk  Packet,  City  of  Louisiana,  made  the  run  from  St. 
Louis  to  Keokuk  (214  miles)  in  16  hours  and  20  minutes,  the  best  time  on  record. 

In  1868  the  steamer  Hawkeye  State,  of  the  Northern  Line  Packet  Company,  made  the  run 
from  St.  Louis  to  St.  Paul  (800  miles)  in  2  days  and  20  hours.     Never  was  beaten. 

In  1853  the  steamer  Polar  Star  made  the  run  from  St.  Louis  to  St.  Joseph,  on  the  Missouri 
River  in  64  hours.  In  July,  1856,  the  steamer  Jas.  H.  Lucas,  Andy  Wineland,  Master,  made 
the  same  run  in  60  hours  and  57  minutes.  The  distance  between  the  ports  is  600  miles,  and 
when  the  difficulties  of  navigating  the  turbulent  Missouri  are  taken  into  consideration,  the  per- 
formance of  the  Lucas  deserves  especial  mention. 


204 


THE   LEE  AND   THE   NATCHEZ. 
Time  Tables.  —  Continued. 


THE    RUN   OF    THE    ROBERT    E.    LEE. 


The  time  made  by  the  R.  E.  Lee  from  New  Orleans  to  St.  Louis  in  1870,  in  her  famous  race 
with  the  Natchez,  is  the  best  on  record,  and,  inasmuch  as  the  race  created  a  national  interest, 
we  give  below  her  time  table  from  port  to  port. 

Left  New  Orleans,  Thursday',  June  30th,  1870,  at  4  o'clock  and  55  minutes,  p.  m.  ;  reached 


Carrol  lton  .     . 

Harry  Hills     . 

Red  Church    . 

Bonnet  Carre . 

College  Point 

Donaldsonville 

Plaquemine 

Baton  Rouge 

Bayou  Sara 

Red  River  . 

Stamps  . 

Bryaro   . 

Hinderson's 

Natchez 

Cole's  Creek 

Waterproof 

Rodney 

St.  Joseph  . 

Grand  Gulf 

Hard  Times 

Half  Mile  Below  Warrenton 


1 

0()i 

1 

39 

2 

38 

3 

50J, 

4 

59 

7 

Ooi 

8 

25 

10 

26 

12 

56 

13 

56 

15 

51  i- 

16 

29 

17 

11 

19 

21 

IS 

53 

20 

45 

21 

02 

22 

06 

'22 

18 

Vicksbure 1 

Milliken's  Bend 1 

Bailey's 1 

Lake  Providence 1 

Greenville 1 

Napoleon 1 

vThite  River 1 

Australia 1 

Helena 1 

Half  Mile  Below  St.  Francis  .     .     .  2 

Memphis 2 

Foot  of  Island  37 2 

Foot  of  Island  26 2 

Tow-head,  Island  14 2 

New  Madrid 2 

Dry  Bar  No.  10 2 

Foot  of  Islands 2 

Upper  Tow-head  —  Lucas  Bend    .  3 

Cairo 3 

St.  Louis 3 


2 

37 

3 

48 

5 

47 

10 

55 

Hi 

22 

16 

56 

19 

23 

25 

6 

9 

9 

13 

30 

17 

23 

19 

50 

20 

37 

21 

25 

1 

18 

14 

The  Lee  landed  at  St.  Louis  at  11.25  a.m..  on  July  4th,  1870  —  six  hours  and  thirty-six 
minutes  ahead  of  the  Natchez.  The  officers  of  the  Natchez  claimed  seven  hours  and  one  minute 
stoppage  on  account  of  fog  and  repairing  machinery.  The  R.  E.  Lee  was  commanded  by  Captain 
John  W.  Gannon,  and  the  Natchez  was  in  charge  of  that  veteran  Southern  boatman,  Captain 
Thomas  P.  Leathers. 


CHAPTER   XVII. 

CUT-OFFS  AND   STEPHEN. 

THESE  dry  details  are  of  importance  in  one  particular. 
They  give  me  an  opportunity  of  introducing  one  of 
the  Mississippi's  oddest  peculiarities,  —  that  of  shortening 
its  length  from  time  to  time.  If  you  will  throw  a  long, 
pliant  apple-paring  over  your  shoulder,  it  will  pretty  fairly 
shape  itself  into  an  average  section  of  the  Mississippi  River ; 
that  is,  the  nine  or  ten  hundred  miles  stretching  from  Cairo, 
Illinois,  southward  to  New  Orleans,  the  same  being  wonder- 
fully crooked,  with  a  brief  straight  bit  here  and  there  at  wide 
intervals.  The  two-hundred-mile  stretch  from  Cairo  north- 
ward to  St.  Louis  is  by  no  means  so  crooked,  that  being  a 
rocky  country  which  the  river  cannot  cut  much. 

The  water  cuts  the  alluvial  banks  of  the  "  lower  "  river 
into  deep  horseshoe  curves  ;  so  deep,  indeed,  that  in  some 
places  if  you  were  to  get  ashore  at  one  extremity  of  the 
horseshoe  and  walk  across  the  neck,  half  or  three  quarters 
of  a  mile,  you  could  sit  down  and  rest  a  couple  of  hours 
while  your  steamer  was  coming  around  the  long  elbow,  at 
a  speed  of  ten  miles  an  hour,  to  take  you  aboard  again. 
When  the  river  is  rising  fast,  some  scoundrel  whose  planta- 
tion is  back  in  the  country,  and  therefore  of  inferior  value, 
has  only  to  watch  his  chance,  cut  a  little  gutter  across  the 
narrow  neck  of  land  some  dark  night,  and  turn  the  water 
into  it,  and  in  a  wonderfully  short  time  a  miracle  has 
happened :  to  wit,  the  whole  Mississippi  has  taken  possession 


206 


WATCHING  AND  DIGGING. 


of  that  little  ditch,  and  placed  the  countryman's  plantation 
on  its  bank  (quadrupling  its  value),  and  that  other  party's 
formerly  valuable  plantation  finds  itself  away  out  yonder  on 

a  big  island  ;  the  old  water- 
course around  it  will  soon 
shoal  up,  boats  cannot  ap- 
proach within  ten  miles  of 
it,  and  down  goes  its  value 
to  a  fourth  of  its  former 
worth.  Watches  are  kept 
on  those  narrow  necks,  at 
needful  times,  and  if  a  man 
happens  to  be  caught  cut- 
ting a  ditch  across  them, 
the  chances  are  all  against 
his  ever  having  another  op- 
portunity to  cut  a  ditch. 

Pray  observe  some  of  the 
effects  of  this  ditching  busi- 
ness. Once  there  was  a 
neck  opposite  Port  Hudson, 
Louisiana,  which  was  only 
half  a  mile  across,  in  its 
narrowest  place.  You  could 
walk  across  there  in  fifteen 
minutes;  but  if  you  made 
the  journey  around  the  cape 
on  a  raft,  you  travelled 
thirty-five  miles  to  accomplish  the  same  thing.  In  1722 
the  river  darted  through  that  neck,  deserted  its  old  bed,  and 
thus  shortened  itself  thirty-five  miles.  In  the  same  way  it 
shortened  itself  twenty-five  miles  at  Black  Hawk  Point  in 
1699.  Below  Red  River  Landing,  Raccourci  cut-off  was  made 
(forty  or  fifty  years  ago,  I  think).  This  shortened  the  river 
twenty-eight  miles.  In  our  day,  if  you  travel  by  river  from 
the  southernmost  of  these  three  cut-offs  to  the  northernmost, 


DANGEROUS    DITCHING. 


SOME  CUT-OFFS. 


207 


you  go  only  seventy  miles.  To  do  the  same  thing  a  hundred 
and  seventy-six  years  ago,  one  had  to  go  a  hundred  and  fifty- 
eight  miles  !  —  a  shortening  of  eighty-eight  miles  in  that 
trifling  distance.  At  some  forgotten  time  in  the  past,  cut- 
offs were  made  above  Vidalia,  Louisiana ;  at  island  92  ;  at 
island  84  ;  and  at  Hale's  Point.  These  shortened  the  river, 
in  the  aggregate,  seventy- 
seven  miles. 

Since  my  own  day  on 
the   Mississippi,   cut-offs 
have  been  made  at  Hur- 
ricane Island  ;    at  island 
100  ;    at    Napoleon,   Ar- 
kansas ;  at  Walnut  Bend ; 
and    at     Council     Bend. 
These  shortened  the  river, 
in    the     aggregate, 
sixty  -  seven    miles 
In  my  own  time 
a    cut-off    was 
made  at  Amer- 
ican   Bend, 
which    short- 
ened the  river 
ten   miles   or 
more. 

Therefore, 
the  Mississippi  between  Cairo  and 
New  Orleans  was  twelve  hundred 
and  fifteen   miles   long  one  hun-  A  scientist. 

dred   and   seventy-six   years  ago. 

It  was  eleven  hundred  and  eighty  after  the  cut  off  of  1722. 
It  was  one  thousand  and  forty  after  the  American  Bend 
cut-off.  It  has  lost  sixty-seven  miles  since.  Consequently 
its  length  is  only  nine  hundred  and  seventy-three  miles  at 
present. 


208  MARVELLOUS   CHANGES. 

Now,  if  I  wanted  to  be  one  of  those  ponderous  scientific 
people,  and  "  let  on  "  to  prove  what  had  occurred  in  the  re- 
mote past  by  what  had  occurred  in  a  given  time  in  the  recent 
past,  or  what  will  occur  in  the  far  future  by  what  has  oc- 
curred in  late  years,  what  an  opportunity  is  here  !  Geology 
never  had  such  a  chance,  nor  such  exact  data  to  argue  from  ! 
Nor  "  development  of  species,"  either  !  Glacial  epochs  are 
great  things,  but  they  are  vague  —  vague.    Please  observe :  — 

In  the  space  of  one  hundred  and  seventy-six  years  the 
Lower  Mississippi  has  shortened  itself  two  hundred  and  forty- 
two  miles.  That  is  an  average  of  a  trifle  over  one  mile  and 
a  third  per  year.  Therefore,  any  calm  person,  who  is  not 
blind  or  idiotic,  can  see  that  in  the  Old  Oolitic  Silurian 
Period,  just  a  million  years  ago  next  November,  the  Lower 
Mississippi  River  was  upwards  of  one  million  three  hundred 
thousand  miles  long,  and  stuck  out  over  the  Gulf  of  Mexico 
like  a  fishing-rod.  And  by  the  same  token  any  person  can 
see  that  seven  hundred  and  forty-two  years  from  now  the 
Lower  Mississippi  will  be  only  a  mile  and  three  quarters 
long,  and  Cairo  and  New  Orleans  will  have  joined  their 
streets  together,  and  be  plodding  comfortably  along  under 
a  single  mayor  and  a  mutual  board  of  aldermen.  There  is 
something  fascinating  about  science.  One  gets  such  whole- 
sale returns  of  conjecture  out  of  such  a  trifling  investment  of 
fact. 

When  the  water  begins  to  flow  through  one  of  those 
ditches  I  have  been  speaking  of,  it  is  time  for  the  people 
thereabouts  to  move.  The  water  cleaves  the  banks  away 
like  a  knife.  By  the  time  the  ditch  has  become  twelve  or 
fifteen  feet  wide,  the  calamity  is  as  good  as  accomplished, 
for  no  power  on  earth  can  stop  it  now.  "When  the  width  has 
reached  a  hundred  yards,  the  banks  begin  to  peel  off  in  slices 
half  an  acre  wide.  The  current  flowing  around  the  bend 
travelled  formerly  only  five  miles  an  hour ;  now  it  is  tre- 
mendously increased  by  the  shortening  of  the  distance.  I 
was  on  board  the  first  boat  that  tried  to  go  through  the 


TOO  AMBITIOUS. 


209 


cut-off  at  American  Bend,  but  we  did  not  get  through.  It 
was  toward  midnight,  and  a  wild  night  it  was  —  thunder, 
lightning,  and  torrents  of  rain.  It  was  estimated  that  the 
current  in  the  cut-off  was  making  about  fifteen  or  twenty 
miles  an  hour ;  twelve  or  thirteen  was  the  best  our  boat 
could  do,  even  in  tolerably  slack  water,  therefore  perhaps 
we  were  foolish  to  try  the  cut-off.     However,  Mr.  Brown 


^ 


DELUGED   AND    CAREENED. 


was  ambitious,  and  he  kept  on  trying. 
~The  eddy  running  up  the  bank,  under  the 
"  point,"  was  about  as  swift  as  the  current 
out  in  the  middle  ;  so  we  would  go  flying  up 
the  shore  like  a  lightning  express  train,  get  on 
a  big  head  of  steam,  and  "  stand  by  for  a  surge  "  when  we 
struck  the  current  that  was  whirling  by  the  point.  But 
all  our  preparations  were  useless.  The  instant  the  cur- 
rent hit  us  it  spun  us  around  like  a  top,  the  water  deluged 
the  forecastle,  and  the  boat  careened  so  far  over  that  one 
could   hardly   keep   his   feet.     The   next   instant   we  were 

14 


210  PILOTS'   PERPLEXITIES. 

away  down  the  river,  clawing  with  might  and  main  to 
keep  out  of  the  woods.  We  tried  the  experiment  four 
times.  I  stood  on  the  forecastle  companion  way  to  see. 
It  was  astonishing  to  observe  how  suddenly  the  boat  would 
spin  around  and  turn  tail  the  moment  she  emerged  from 
the  eddy  and  the  current  struck  her  nose.  The  sound- 
ing concussion  and  the  quivering  would  have  been  about 
the  same  if  she  had  come  full  speed  against  a  sand-bank. 
Under  the  lightning  flashes  one  could  see  the  plantation 
cabins  and  the  goodly  acres  tumble  into  the  river ;  and  the 
crash  they  made  was  not  a  bad  effort  at  thunder.  Once, 
when  we  spun  around,  we  only  missed  a  house  about  twenty 
feet,  that  had  a  light  burning  in  the  window ;  and  in  the 
same  instant  that  house  went  overboard.  Nobody  could  stay 
on  our  forecastle  ;  the  water  swept  across  it  in  a  torrent  every 
time  we  plunged  athwart  the  current.  At  the  end  of  our 
fourth  effort  we  brought  up  in  the  woods  two  miles  below 
the  cut-off ;  all  the  country  there  was  overflowed,  of  course. 
A  day  or  two  later  the  cut-off  was  three  quarters  of  a  mile 
wide,  and  boats  passed  up  through  it  without  much  difficulty, 
and  so  saved  ten  miles.    ■ 

The  old  Raccourci  cut-off  reduced  the  river's  length  twenty- 
eight  miles.  There  used  to  be  a  tradition  connected  with  it. 
It  was  said  that  a  boat  came  along  there  in  the  night  and 
went  around  the  enormous  elbow  the  usual  way,  the  pilots 
not  knowing  that  the  cut-off  had  been  made.  It  was  a  grisly, 
hideous  night,  and  all  shapes  were  vague  and  distorted.  The 
old  bend  had  already  begun  to  fill  up,  and  the  boat  got  to 
running  away  from  mysterious  reefs,  and  occasionally  hitting 
one.  The  perplexed  pilots  fell  to  swearing,  and  finally  uttered 
the  entirely  unnecessary  wish  that  they  might  never  get  out 
of  that  place.  As  always  happens  in  such  cases,  that  par- 
ticular prayer  was  answered,  and  the  others  neglected.  So 
to  this  day  that  phantom  steamer  is  still  butting  around  in 
that  deserted  river,  trying  to  find  her  way  out.  More  than 
one  grave  watchman  has  sworn  to  me  that  on  drizzly,  dismal 


THE   SPECTRAL   STEAMBOAT. 


211 


nights,  he  has  glanced  fear, 
fully  down  that  forgotten  riv- 
er as  he  passed  the  head  of 
the  island,  and  seen  the  faint 
glow  of  the  spectre  steamer's 
lights  drifting  through  the 
distant  gloom,  and  heard  the 
muffled  cough  of  her  'scape- 
pipes  and  the  plaintive  cry 
of  her  leads-men. 

In  the  absence  of  further 
statistics,  I  beg  to  close  this 
chapter  with  one  more  remi- 
niscence of  "  Stephen." 

Most  of  the  captains  and 

pilots    held   Stephen's    note 

for  borrowed  sums,  ranging 

from  two  hundred  and  fifty  dollars  upward.     Stephen  never 

paid  one  of  these  notes,  but  he  was  very  prompt  and  very 

zealous  about  renewing  them  every  twelve  month. 

Of  course  there  came  a  time,  at  last,  when  Stephen  could 
no  longer  borrow  of  his  ancient  creditors  ;  so  he  was  obliged 
to  lie  in  wait  for  new  men  who  did  not  know  him.  Such  a 
victim  was  good-hearted,  simple-natured  young  Yates  (I  use 


212  INNOCENT  YATES. 

a  fictitious  name,  but  the  real  name  began,  as  this  one  does, 
with  a  Y).  Young  Yates  graduated  as  a  pilot,  got  a  berth, 
and  when  the  month  was  ended  and  he  stepped  up  to  the 
clerk's  office  and  received  his  two  hundred  and  fifty  dollars 
in  crisp  new  bills,  Stephen  was  there !  His  silvery  tongue 
began  to  wag,  and  in  a  very  little  while  Yates's  two  hun- 
dred and  fifty  dollars  had  changed  hands.  The  fact  was 
soon  known  at  pilot  headquarters,  and  the  amusement  and 
satisfaction  of  the  old  creditors  were  large  and  generous. 
But  innocent  Yates  never  suspected  that  Stephen's  promise 
to  pay  promptly  at  the  end  of  the  week  was  a  worthless  one. 
Yates  called  for  his  money  at  the  stipulated  time ;  Stephen 
sweetened  him  up  and  put  him  off  a  week.  He  called  then, 
according  to  agreement,  and  came  away  sugar-coated  again, 
but  suffering  under  another  postponement.  So  the  thing 
went  on.  Yates  haunted  Stephen  week  after  week,  to  no 
purpose,  and  at  last  gave  it  up.  And  then  straightway  Ste- 
phen began  to  haunt  Yates  !  Wherever  Yates  appeared, 
there  was  the  inevitable  Stephen.  And  not  only  there,  but 
beaming  with  affection  and  gushing  with  apologies  for  not 
being  able  to  pay.  By  and  by,  whenever  poor  Yates  saw 
him  coming,  he  would  turn  and  fly,  and  drag  his  company 
with  him,  if  he  had  company ;  but  it  was  of  no  use ;  his 
debtor  would  run  him  down  and  corner  him.  Panting  and 
red-faced,  Stephen  would  come,  with  outstretched  hands  and 
eager  eyes,  invade  the  conversation,  shake  both  of  Yates's 
arms  loose  in  their  sockets,  and  begin  :  — 

"  My,  what  a  race  I  've  had  !  I  saw  you  did  n't  see  me, 
and  so  I  clapped  on  all  steam  for  fear  I  'd  miss  you  entirely. 
And  here  you  are !  there,  just  stand  so,  and  let  me  look  at 
you !  Just  the  same  old  noble  countenance."  [To  Yates's 
friend  :]  "  Just  look  at  him !  Look  at  him  !  Ain't  it  just 
good  to  look  at  him  !  Ain't  it  now  ?  Ain't  he  just  a  picture  ! 
Some  call  him  a  picture  ;  I  call  him  a  panorama  !  That 's 
what  he  is  —  an  entire  panorama.  And  now  I  'm  reminded  ! 
How  I  do  wish  I  could  have  seen  you  an  hour  earlier !     For 


WILY  STEPHEN. 


213 


twenty-four  hours  I  've  been  saving  up  that  two  hundred  and 
fifty  dollars  for  you ;  been  looking  for  you  everywhere.     I 


"  MY,   WHAT   A   RACE   I  'VE   HAD  ! 


waited  at  the  Planter's  from  six  yesterday  evening  till  two 
o'clock  this  morning,  without  rest  or  food  ;  my  wife  says, 
<  Where  have  you  been  all  night  ? '     I  said, '  This  debt  lies 


214  A  NEW   WAY 

heavy  on  my  mind.'  She  says, '  In  all  my  days  I  never  saw 
a  man  take  a  debt  to  heart  the  way  you  do.'  I  said, '  It 's 
my  nature  ;  how  can  /  change  it  ? '  She  says,  '  Well,  do  go 
to  bed  and  get  some  rest.'  I  said,  'Not  till  that  poor,  noble 
young  man  has  got  his  money.'  So  I  set  up  all  night,  and 
this  morning  out  I  shot,  and  the  first  man  I  struck  told  me 
you  had  Shipped  on  the  '  Grank  Turk '  and  gone  to  New 
Orleans.  Well,  sir,  I  had  to  lean  up  against  a  building  and 
cry.  So  help  me  goodness,  I  could  n't  help  it.  The  man 
that  owned  the  place  come  out  cleaning  up  with  a  rag,  and 
said  he  did  n't  like  to  have  people  cry  against  his  building, 
and  then  it  seemed  to  me  that  the  whole  world  had  turned 
against  me,  and  it  was  n't  any  use  to  live  any  more  ;  and 
coming  along  an  hour  ago,  suffering  no  man  knows  what 
agony,  I  met  Jim  Wilson  and  paid  him  the  two  hundred 
and  fifty  dollars  on  account ;  and  to  think  that  here  you 
are,  now,  and  I  have  n't  got  a  cent !  But  as  sure  as  I  am 
standing  here  on  this  ground  on  this  particular  brick,  — 
there,  I  've  scratched  a  mark  on  the  brick  to  remember  it 
by,  —  I  '11  borrow  that  money  and  pay  it  over  to  you  at 
twelve  o'clock  sharp,  to-morrow !  Now,  stand  so ;  let  me 
look  at  you  just  once  more." 

And  so  on.  Yates's  life  became  a  burden  to  him.  He 
could  not  escape  his  debtor  and  his  debtor's  awful  sufferings 
on  account  of  not  being  able  to  pay.  He  dreaded  to  show 
himself  in  the  street,  lest  he  should  find  Stephen  lying  in 
wait  for  him  at  the  corner. 

Bogart's  billiard  saloon  was  a  great  resort  for  pilots  in 
those  days.  They  met  there  about  as  much  to  exchange 
river  news  as  to  play.  One  morning  Yates  was  there ;  Ste- 
phen was  there,  too,  but  kept  out  of  sight.  But  by  and 
by,  when  about  all  the  pilots  had  arrived  who  were  in  town, 
Stephen  suddenly  appeared  in  the  midst,  and  rushed  for 
Yates  as  for  a  long-lost  brother. 

"  Oh,  I  am  so  glad  to  see  you !  Oh  my  soul,  the  sight  of 
you  is  such  a  comfort  to  my  eyes !     Gentlemen,  I  owe  all 


TO  PAY  OLD  DEBTS. 


215 


of  you  money  ;  among  you  I  owe  probably  forty  thousand 
dollars.  I  want  to  pay  it ;  I  intend  to  pay  it  —  every  last 
cent  of  it.  You  all  know,  without  my  telling  you,  what 
sorrow  it  has  cost  me  to  remain  so  long  under  such  deep 
obligations  to  such 
patient  and  gener- 
ous friends ;  but 
the  sharpest  pang 
I  suffer  —  by  far 
the  sharpest — 
is  from  the  debt 
I  owe  to  this 
noble  young  man 
here;  and  I 
have  come  to  this 
place  this  morn- 
ing especially  to 
make  the  an- 
nouncement that 
I  have  at  last 
found  a  method 
whereby  I  can 
pay  off  all  my 
debts  !  And  most 
especially  I  wanted 
him  to  be  here 
when  I  announced 
it.  Yes,  my  faith- 
ful friend, — my  benefactor,  I  Ve  found  the  method!  I've 
found  the  method  to  pay  off  all  my  debts,  and  you'll  get 
your  money ! "  Hope  dawned  in  Yates's  eye ;  then  Ste- 
phen, beaming  benignantly,  and  placing  his  hand  upon 
Yates's  head,  added,  "  I  am  going  to  pay  them  off  in  alpha- 
betical order ! " 

Then  he  turned  and  disappeared.     The  full  significance  of 
Stephen's  "  method  "  did  not  dawn  upon  the  perplexed  and 


BEAMING  BENIGNANTLY. 


216 


AWFULLY  ANXIOUS. 


musing  crowd  for  some  two  minutes  ;  and  then  Yates  mur- 
mured with  a  sigh :  — 

"  Well,  the  Y's  stand  a  gaudy  chance.  He  won't  get  any 
further  than  the  C's  in  this  world,  and  I  reckon  that  after  a 
good  deal  of  eternity  has  wasted  away  in  the  next  one,  I  '11 
still  be  referred  to  up  there  as  '  that  poor,  ragged  pilot  that 
came  here 'from  St.  Louis  in  the  early  days  ! '  " 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 

I   TAKE   A  FEW  EXTRA  LESSONS. 

DURING  the  two  or  two  and  a  half  years  of  my  appren- 
ticeship, I  served  under  many  pilots,  and  had  experi- 
ence of  many  kinds  of  steamboatmen  and  many  varieties  of 
steamboats  ;  for  it  was  not  always  convenient  for  Mr.  Bixby 
to  have  me  with  him,  and  in  such  cases  he  sent  me  with 
somebody  else.  I  am  to  this  day  profiting  somewhat  by 
that  experience  ;  for  in  that  brief,  sharp  schooling,  I  got 
personally  and  familiarly  acquainted  with  about  all  the  dif- 
ferent types  of  human  nature  that  are  to  be  found  in  fiction, 
biography,  or  history.  The  fact  is  daily  borne  in  upon 
me,  that  the  average  shore-employment  requires  as  much  as 
forty  years  to  equip  a  man  with  this  sort  of  an  education. 
When  I  say  I  am  still  profiting  by  this  thing,  I  do  not  mean 
that  it  has  constituted  me  a  judge  of  men  —  no,  it  has  not 
done  that ;  for  judges  of  men  are  born,  not  made.  My  profit 
is  various  in  kind  and  degree ;  but  the  feature  of  it  which  I 
value  most  is  the  zest  which  that  early  experience  has  given 
to  my  later  reading.  When  I  find  a  well-drawn  character  in 
fiction  or  biography,  I  generally  take  a  warm  personal  inter- 
est in  him,  for  the  reason  that  I  have  known  him  before  — 
met  him  on  the  river. 

The  figure  that  comes  before  me  oftenest,  out  of  the  shad- 
ows of  that  vanished  time,  is  that  of  Brown,  of  the  steamer 
"Pennsylvania"  —  the  man  referred  to  in  a  former  chapter, 
whose  memory  was  so  good  and  tiresome.  He  was  a  middle- 
aged,  long,  slim,  bony,  smooth-shaven,  horse-faced,  ignorant, 
stingy,  malicious,  snarling,  fault-hunting,  mote-magnifying 


218 


MY   NEW   TUTOR. 


tyrant.    I  early  got  the  habit  of  coming  on  watch  with  dread 
at  my  heart.     No  matter  how  good  a  time  I  might  have  been 

having  with  the  off-watch  below, 
and  no  matter  how  high  my  spir- 
its might  be  when  I  started  aloft, 
my  soul  became  lead  in  my  body 
the  moment  I  approached  the 
pilot-house. 

I  still  remember  the  first  time 
I  ever  entered  the  presence  of 
that  man.  The  boat  had  backed 
out  from  St.  Louis  and  was 
"  straightening  down  ;  "  I  ascend- 
ed to  the  pilot-house  in  high 
feather,  and  very  proud  to  be 
semi-officially  a  member  of  the 
executive  family  of  so  fast  and 
famous  a  boat.  Brown  was  at 
the  wheel.  I  paused  in  the  mid- 
dle of  the  room,  all  fixed  to  make 
my  bow,  but  Brown  did  not  look 
around.  I  thought  he  took  a 
furtive  glance  at  me  out  of  the 
corner  of  his  eye,  but  as  not  even 
this  notice  was  repeated,  I  judged 
I  had  been  mistaken.  By  this  time  he  was  picking  his  way 
among  some  dangerous  "  breaks "  abreast  the  wood-yards ; 
therefore  it  would  not  be  proper  to  interrupt  him  ;  so  I 
stepped  softly  to  the  high  bench  and  took  a  seat. 

There  was  silence  for  ten  minutes  ;  then  my  new  boss 
turned  and  inspected  me  deliberately  and  painstakingly 
from  head  to  heel  for  about — as  it  seemed  to  me — a  quar- 
ter of  an  hour.  After  which  he  removed  his  countenance 
and  I  saw  it  no  more  for  some  seconds  ;  then  it  came  around 
once  more,  and  this  question  greeted  me :  — 
"  Are  you  Horace  Bigsby's  cub  ?  " 


PILOT   BROWN. 


CATECHISED. 


219 


"Yes,  sir." 

After  this   there  was   a  pause   and    another   inspection. 
Then : 

"  What's  your  name  ?  " 

I  told  him.     He  repeat- 
ed it  after  me.    It  was 
probably    the     only 
thing  he  ever  for- 
got ;  for  although 
I   was    with    him 
many    months 
he    never    ad- 
dressed him- 
self to  me  in 
any  other  way     — zp^jP 
than  "Here!" 
and  then  his 


command     (/, 
followed. 

"Where 
was  you 
born  ?  " 

"In  Flori- 
da, Missouri." 

A  pause. 
Then : — 

"  Dern  sight 
better  staid 
there ! " 

By  means  of 
a  dozen  or  so  of    pretty  direct  questions,  he  pumped  my 
family  history  out  of  me. 

The  leads  were  going  now,  in  the  first  crossing.  This 
interrupted  the  inquest.  When  the  leads  had  been  laid  in, 
he  resumed :  — 

"  How  long  you  been  on  the  river  ?" 


ARE   YOU   HORACE   BIGSBY  S   CUB  X 


220 


MY   SHOES   INSPECTED. 


I  told  him.     After  a  pause  :  — 
"  Where  'd  you  get  them  shoes  ?  " 


I  gave 

lim  the  in- 

formation 

"  Hold 

up 

your 

foot ! " 

I     did 

so. 

He 

stepped 

back, 

ex- 

amined 

the 

shoe 

minutely 

and 

con- 

temptuously ,  scratch- 
ing his  head  thought- 
fully, tilting  his  high 
sugar-loaf  hat  well 
forward  to  facilitate 
the  operation,  then 
ejaculated,  "  Well, 
I'll  be  dod  derned !  " 
and  returned  to  his 
wheel. 

What    occasion 
there  was  to' be  dod 
derned  about  it  is  a 
thing  which  is    still 
as     much    of    a    mys- 
tery to  me  now  as    it 
was    then.       It    must 
have  been  all  of  fifteen 
minutes — fifteen   min- 
utes   of     dull,     home- 
sick     silence  —  before 
that     long     horse-face 
swung  round  upon  me 
again — and  then,  what 
It  was  as  red  as  fire,  and  every  muscle  in  it  was 


HOLD   UP   YOUR   FOOT. 


a  change ! 

working.     Now  came  this  shriek 


STUPEFIED. 


221 


"  Here !  — You  going 
I  lit  in  the  middle  of 

suddenness    of    the 

as  I  could  get  my 

apologetically :  — 

orders,  sir." 


'take  that  ice  pitcher. 


all  day  about  it ! 


to  set  there  all  day  ?  " 
the  floor,  shot  there  by  the  electric 
surprise.     As  soon 
voice     I     said, 
"  I  have  had  no 
"You've  had 
no  orders  !  My, 
what  a  fine  bird 
we   are !       We 
must  have    or- 
ders !    Our   fa- 
ther   was    a 
gentleman  — 
owned  slaves 
— and  we  've 
heento  school. 
Yes,  we  are  a 
gentleman,  too, 
and  got  to  have 
orders!  Orders,  is  it?  ORDERS 
is  what  you  want !      Dod  dern 
my  skin,  I  Jll  learn  you  to  swell 
yourself    up    and    blow  around 
here   about  your  dod-derned  or- 
ders !     Gr'  way  from  the  wheel ! " 
(I    had   approached   it   without 
knowing  it.) 

I  moved  back  a  step  or  two, 
and  stood  as  in  a  dream,  all  my 
senses  stupefied  by  this  frantic 
assault. 

"  What  you  standing  there 
for  ?  Take  that  ice-pitcher  down 
to  the  texas-tender  —  come, 
move  along,  and   don  't  you  be 


222 


UNDER   SURVEILLANCE. 


The  moment  I  got  back  to  the  pilot-house,  Brown  said : 

"  Here  !     What  was  you  doing  down  there  all  this  time  ?  " 
"  I  could  n't  find  the  texas-tender ;  I  had  to  go  all  the  way 

to  the  pantry." 

"  Denied  likely  story !     Fill  up  the  stove." 

I  proceeded  to  do  so.    He  watched  me  like  a  cat.    Presently 

he  shouted :  — 


"  Put  down  that 
est  numskull  I  ever 
got    sense   enough  to 

All  through  the 
of  thing  went  on.  Yes, 
quent  watches  were 
during  a  stretch  of 
have  said,  I  soon  got 
ing  on  duty  with 
ment  I  was  in  the  presence,  even  in  the 
could  feel  those  yellow  eyes  upon  me,  and 


PULL   IIER   DOWN  !  " 


shovel !  Dernd- 
saw — ain't  even 
load  up  a  stove." 
watch  this  sort 
and  the  snbse- 
much  like  it, 
months.  As  I 
the  habit  of  com- 
dread.  The  mo- 
darkest  night,  I 
knew  their  owner 


ROUGH  TIMES.  223 

was  watching  for  a  pretext  to  spit  out  some  venom  on  me. 
Preliminarily  he  would  say  :  — 

"  Here  !     Take  the  wheel." 

Two  minutes  later  :  — 

"  Where  in  the  nation  you  going  to  ?  Pull  her  down ! 
pull  her  down  !  " 

After  another  moment :  — 

"  Say  !  You  going  to  hold  her  all  day  ?  Let  her  go  — 
meet  her  !  meet  her  !  " 

Then  he  would  jump  from  the  bench,  snatch  the  wheel 
from  me,  and  meet  her  himself,  pouring  out  wrath  upon  me 
all  the  time. 

George  Ritchie  was  the  other  pilot's  cub.  He  was  having 
good  times  now ;  for  his  boss,  George  Ealer,  was  as  kind- 
hearted  as  Brown  was  n't.  Ritchie  had  steered  for  Brown 
the  season  before  ;  consequently  he  knew  exactly  how  to 
entertain  himself  and  plague  me,  all  by  the  one  operation. 
Whenever  I  took  the  wheel  for  a  moment  on  Ealer's  watch, 
Ritchie  would  sit  back  on  the  bench  and  play  Brown,  with 
continual  ejaculations  of  "  Snatch  her  !  snatch  her  !  Dernd- 
est  mud-cat  I  ever  saw ! "  "  Here  !  Where  you  going  now  ? 
Going  to  run  over  that  snag  ? "  "  Pull  her  down  !  Don't 
you  hear  me?  Pull  her  down!"  "There  she  goes !  Just 
as  I  expected !  I  told  you  not  to  cramp  that  reef.  G'  way 
from  the  wheel !  " 

So  I  always  had  a  rough  time  of  it,  no  matter  whose 
watch  it  was  ;  and  sometimes  it  seemed  to  me  that  Ritchie's 
good-natured  badgering  was  pretty  nearly  as  aggravating  as 
Brown's  dead-earnest  nagging. 

I  often  wanted  to  kill  Brown,  but  this  would  not  answer. 
A  cub  had  to  take  everything  his  boss  gave,  in  the  way  of 
vigorous  comment  and  criticism ;  and  we  all  believed  that 
there  was  a  United  States  law  making  it  a  penitentiary 
offence  to  strike  or  threaten  a  pilot  who  was  on  duty. 
However,  I  could  imagine  myself  killing  Brown ;  there  was 
no  law  against  that ;  and  that  was  the  thing  I  used  always 


224 


CHERISHING  REVENGE. 


to  do  the  moment  I  was  abed.  Instead  of  going  over  my 
river  in  my  mind  as  was  my  duty,  I  threw  business  aside 
for  pleasure,  and  killed  Brown.  I  killed  Brown  every  night 
for  months ;  not  in  old,  stale,  commonplace  ways,  but  in 
new  and  picturesque  ones,  —  ways  that  were  sometimes  sur- 
prising for  freshness  of  design  and  ghastliness  of  situation 
and  environment. 

Brown  was  always  watching  for  a  pretext  to  find  fault ; 
a*hd  if  he  could  find  no  plausible  pretext,  he  would  invent 
one.     He  would  scold  you  for  shaving  a  shore,  and  for  not 
shaving  it ; 
for  hugging 
a  bar,    and 
for  not  hug- 
ging it ;  for 


I   KILLED   BROWN   EVERT   NIGHT. 


"  pulling  down  "  when  not  invited,  and  for  not  pulling  down 
when  not  invited ;  for  firing  up  without  orders,  and  for  wait- 
ing for  orders.  In  a  word,  it  was  his  invariable  rule  to 
find  fault  with  everything  you  did ;  and  another  invariable 
rule  of  his  was  to  throw  all  his  remarks  (to  you)  into  the 
form  of  an  insult.  p 

One  day  we  were  approaching  New  Madrid,  bound  down 
and  heavily  laden.  Brown  was  at  one  side  of  the  wheel, 
steering ;  I  was  at  the  other,  standing  by  to  "  pull  down  "  or 


BOUND   TO   SUCCEED. 


225 


"  shove  up."  He  cast  a  furtive  glance  at  me  every  now  and 
then.  I  had  long  ago  learned  what  that  meant ;  viz.,  he 
was  trying  to  invent  a  trap  for  me.  I  wondered  what  shape 
it  was  going  to  take.  By  and  by  he  stepped  back  from  the 
wheel  and  said  in  his  usual  snarly  way  :  — 

"  Here  !  —  See  if  you  've  got  gumption  enough  to  round 
her  to." 

This  was  simply  bound  to  be  a  success ;   nothing  could 
prevent  it ;  for  he  had  never  allowed  me  to  round  the  boat 
to  before  ;  consequently,  no  matter 
how  I  might  do  the  thing,  he  could 
find  free  fault  with  it.      He  stood 
back  there  with  his  greedy  eye  on 
me,  and  the  result 
was      what     might 
have  been  foreseen : 
I  lost  my  head  in  a 
quarter  of  a  minute, 
and    did  n't     know 
what  I  was  about ; 
I  started  too  early 
to    bring   the   boat 
around, but  detected 
a   green    gleam    of 
joy  in  Brown's  eye, 
and    corrected    my 
mistake ;    I  started 
around    once   more 
while  too  high  up, 
but  corrected  myself 
again    in    time ;    I 
made     other    false 

moves,  and  still  managed  to  save  myself ;  but  at  last  I  grew 
so  confused  and  anxious  that  I  tumbled  into  the  very 
worst  blunder  of  all  —  I  got  too  far  down  before  beginning 
to  fetch  the  boat  around.     Brown's  chance  was  come. 

15 


tf.Kt 


ITUELED   ME    ACROSS   THE    HOUSE. 


226 


AN   UNCOMFORTABLE   HOUR. 


His  face  turned  red  with  passion ;  he  made  one  bound, 
hurled  me  across  the  house  with  a  sweep  of  his  arm,  spun 
the  wheel  down,  and  began  to  pour  out  a  stream  of  vituper- 
ation upon  me  which  lasted  till  he  was  out  of  breath.  In  the 
course  of  this  speech  he  called  me  all  the  different  kinds  of 
hard  names  he  could  think  of,  and  once  or  twice  I  thought  he 
was  even  going  to  swear  —  but  he  had  never  done  that,  and 
he  did  n't  this  time.  "  Dod  dern  "  was  the  nearest  he  ven- 
tured to  the  luxury  of  swearing,  for  he  had  been  brought  up 
with  a  wholesome  respect  for  future  fire  and  brimstone. 

That  was  an  uncomfortable  hour ;  for  there  was  a  big 
audience  on  the  hurricane  deck.  When  I  went  to  bed  that 
night,  I  killed  Brown  in  seventeen  different  ways  —  all  of 
them  new. 


^jXi 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

BROWN  AND  I  EXCHANGE  COMPLIMENTS. 

TWO  trips  later,  I  got  into  serious  trouble.  Brown  was 
steering;  I  was  "-pulling  down."  My  younger  brother 
appeared  on  the  hurricane  deck,  and  shouted  to  Brown  to 
stop  at  some  landing  or  other  a  mile  or  so  below.  Brown 
gave  no  intimation  that  he  had  heard  anything.  But  that 
was  his  way :  he  never  condescended  to  take  notice  of  an 
under  clerk.  The  wind  was  blowing;  Brown  was  deaf 
(although  he  always  pretended  he  was  n't),  and  I  very  much 
doubted  if  he  had  heard  the  order.  If  I  had  had  two  heads, 
I  would  have  spoken ;  but  as  I  had  only  one,  it  seemed  judi- 
cious to  take  care  of  it ;  so  I  kept  still. 

Presently,  sure  enough,  we  went  sailing  by  that  plantation. 
Captain  Klinefelter  appeared  on  the  deck,  and  said :  — 

"  Let  her  come  around,  sir,  let  her  come  around.  Did  n't 
Henry  tell  you  to  land  here  ? " 

«M,  sir'!" 

"  I  sent  him  up  to  do  it." 

"  He  did  come  up ;  and  that 's  all  the  good  it  done,  the 
dod-derned  fool.     He  never  said  anything." 

"  Didn't  you  hear  him  ?  "  asked  the  captain  of  me. 

Of  course  I  did  n't  want  to  be  mixed  up  in  this  business, 
but  there  was  no  way  to  avoid  it ;  so  1  said  :  — 

"  Yes,  sir." 

I  knew  what  Brown's  next  remark  would  be,  before  he 
uttered  it ;  it  was  :  — 

"  Shut  your  mouth !  you  never  heard  anything  of  the 
kind." 


228  THE   WO  KM   TURNS. 

I  closed  my  mouth  according  to  instructions.  An  hour 
later,  Henry  entered  the  pilot-house,  unaware  of  what  had 
been  going  on.  He  was  a  thoroughly  inoffensive  boy,  and  I 
was  sorry  to  see  him  come,  for  I  knew  Brown  would  have 
no  pity  on  him.     Brown  began,  straightway  :  — 

"  Here  [  why  did  n't  you  tell  me  we  'd  got  to  land  at  that 
plantation  ?  " 

"  I  did  tell  you,  Mr.  Brown." 

"  It 's  a  lie  !  " 

I  said:  — 

"  You  lie,  yourself.     He  did  tell  you." 

Brown  glared  at  me  in  unaffected  surprise ;  and  for  as 
much  as  a  moment  he  was  entirely  speechless ;  then  he 
shouted  to  me  :  — 

"I'll  attend  to  your  case  in  a  half  a  minute!"  then  to 
Henry,  "  And  you  leave  the  pilot-house  ;  out  with  you  !  " 

It  was  pilot  law,  and  must  be  obeyed.  The  boy  started 
out,  and  even  had  his  foot  on  the  upper  step  outside  the 
door,  when  Brown,  with  a  sudden  access  of  fury,  picked  up 
a  ten-pound  lump  of  coal  and  sprang  after  him ;  but  I  was 
between,  with  a  heavy  stool,  and  I  hit  Brown  a  good  honest 
blow  which  stretched  him  out. 

I  had  committed  the  crime  of  crimes,  —  I  had  lifted  my 
hand  against  a  pilot  on  duty !  I  supposed  I  was  booked  for 
the  penitentiary  sure,  and  could  n't  be  booked  any  surer  if 
I  went  on  and  squared  my  long  account  with  this  person 
while  I  had  the  chance ;  consequently  I  stuck  to  him  and 
pounded  him  with  my  lists  a  considerable  time,  —  I  do  not 
know  how  long,  the  pleasure  of  it  probably  made  it  seem 
longer  than  it  really  was;  —  but  in  the  end  he  struggled  free 
and  jumped  up  and  sprang  to  the  wheel :  a  very  natural 
solicitude,  for,  all  this  time,  here  was  this  steamboat  tearing 
down  the  river  at  the  rate  of  fifteen  miles  an  hour  and 
nobody  at  the  helm !  However,  Eagle  Bend  was  two  miles 
wide  at  this  bank-full  stage,  and  correspondingly  long  and 
deep ;  and  the  boat  was  steering  herself  straight  down  the 


"I   HIT    BROWN    A    GOOD   HONEST   BLOW. 


MY   COURAGE   REVIVES. 


231 


middle  and  taking  no  chances.     Still,  that  was  only  luck  — 
a  body  might  have  found  her  charging  into  the  woods. 

Perceiving,  at  a  glance,  that  the  "  Pennsylvania  "  was  in 
no  danger,  Brown  gathered  up  the  big  spy-glass,  war-club 
fashion,  and  ordered  me  out  of  the  pilot-house  with  more 
than  Comanche  bluster.  But  I  was  not  afraid  of  him  now ; 
so,  instead  of  going,  I  tarried,  and  criticised  his  grammar  ;  I 


THE  RACKET  HAD  BROTTGHT  EVERYBODY  TO  THE  DECK. 


reformed  his  ferocious  speeches  for  him,  and  put  them  into 
good  English,  calling  his  attention  to  the  advantage  of  pure 
English  over  the  bastard  dialect  of  the  Pennsylvanian  col- 
lieries whence  he  was  extracted.  He  could  have  done  his 
part  to  admiration  in  a  cross-fire  of  mere  vituperation,  of 
course ;  but  he  was  not  equipped  for  this  species  of  contro- 
versy ;  so  he  presently  laid  aside  his  glass  and  took  the 


232 


RETRIBUTION  AHEAD. 


wheel,  muttering  and  shaking  his  head ;  and  I  retired  to 
the  bench.  The  racket  had  brought  everybody  to  the  hur- 
ricane deck,  and  I  trembled  when  I  saw  the  old  captain 
looking  up  from  the  midst  of  the  crowd.  I  said  to  myself, 
"  Now  I  am  done  for !  "  —  For  although,  as  a  rule,  he  was 
so  fatherly  and  indulgent  toward  the  boat's  family,  and  so 

patient  of  minor 
shortcomings,  he 
could  be  stern 
enough  when  the 
fault  was  worth  it. 

I  tried  to  imagine 
what  he  would  do 
to  a  cub  pilot  who 
had  been  guilty  of 
such  a  crime  as 
mine,  committed  on 
a  boat  guard-deep 
with  costly  freight 
and  alive  with  pas- 
sengers. Our  watch 
was  nearly  ended. 
I  thought  I  would 
go  and  hide  some- 
where till  I  got  a 
chance  to  slide 
ashore.  So  I  slipped 
out  of  the  pilot- 
house, and  down 
the  steps,  and  around  to  the  texas  door,  —  and  was  in  the 
act  of  gliding  within,  when  the  captain  confronted  me  ! 
I  dropped  my  head,  and  he  stood  over  me  in  silence  a 
moment  or  two,  then  said  impressively, — 
"  Follow  me." 

I  dropped  into  his  wake ;  he  led  the  way  to  his  parlor  in 
the  forward  end  of  the  texas.     We  were  alone,  now.     He 


SO   YOU    HAVE   BEEN    FIGHTING. 


THE   CAPTAIN'S   VERDICT.  233 

closed  the  after  door ;  then  moved  slowly  to  the  forward  one 
and  closed  that.  He  sat  down  ;  I  stood  before  him.  He 
looked  at  me  some  little  time,  then  said,  — 

':  So  you  have  been  lighting  Mr.  Brown  ?  " 

I  answered  meekly  :  — 

"  Yes,  sir." 

"  Do  you  know  that  that  is  a  very  serious  matter  ?  " 

"  Yes,  sir." 

"  Are  you  aware  that  this  boat  was  ploughing  down  the 
river  fully  five  minutes  with  no  one  at  the  wheel  ? " 

"  Yes,  sir." 

"  Did  you  strike  him  first  ?  " 

"Yes,  sir." 

"  What  with  ?  " 

"  A  stool,  sir." 

"  Hard  ? " 

"  Middling,  sir." 

"  Did  it  knock  him  down  ?  " 

"  He  —  he  fell,  sir." 

"  Did  you  follow  it  up  ?     Did  you  do  anything  further  ?  " 

"  Yes,  sir." 

"  What  did  you  do  ?  " 

"  Pounded  him,  sir." 

"  Pounded  him  ?  " 

"  Yes,  sir." 

"  Did  you  pound  him  much  ? — that  is,  severely  ?  " 

"  One  might  call  it  that,  sir,  maybe." 

"I  'm  deuced  glad  of  it !  Hark  ye,  never  mention  that  I 
said  that.  You  have  been  guilty  of  a  great  crime ;  and  don't 
you  ever  be  guilty  of  it  again,  on  this  boat.  But  —  lay  for 
him  ashore  !  Give  him  a  good  sound  thrashing,  do  you  hear  ? 
I  '11  pay  the  expenses.  Now  go  —  and  mind  you,  not  a  word 
of  this  to  anybody.  Clear  out  with  you  !  —  you  've  been 
guilty  of  a  great  crime,  you  whelp !  " 

I  slid  out,  happy  with  the  sense  of  a  close  shave  and 
a    mighty    deliverance ;     and    T    heard    him    laughing    to 


234 


BROWN'S   ULTIMATUM. 


himself  and  slapping  his  fat  thighs  after  I  had  closed  his 
door. 

When  Brown  came  off  watch  he  went  straight  to  the  cap- 
tain, who  was  talking  with  some  passengers  on  the  boiler 
deck,  and  demanded  that  I  be  put  ashore  in  New  Orleans  — 
and  added :  — 


"an  emancipated  slave." 


"  I  '11  never  turn  a  wheel  on  this  boat  again  while  that 
cub  stays." 

The  captain  said  :  — 

"But  he  needn't  come  round  when  you  are  on  watch, 
Mr.  Brown." 


EMANCIPATION. 


235 


"  I  won't  even  stay  on  the  same  boat  with  him.  One  of 
us  has  got  to  go  ashore." 

"  Very  well,"  said  the  captain,  "  let  it  be  yourself  ;  "  and 
resumed  his  talk  with  the  passengers. 

During  the  brief  remainder  of  the  trip,  I  knew  how  an 
emancipated  slave  feels  ;  for  I  was  an  emancipated  slave 
myself.  While  we  lay  at  landings,  I  listened  to  George 
Ealer's  flute  ;  or  to  his  readings  from  his  two  bibles,  that 
is  to  say,  Goldsmith  and  Shakspeare  ;  or  I  played  chess 
with  him  —  and  would  have  beaten  him  sometimes,  only 
he  always  took  back  his  last  move  and  ran  the  game  out 
differently. 


CHAPTER   XX. 


A   CATASTROPHE. 


WE  lay  three  days  in  New  Orleans,  bat  the  captain  did 
not  succeed  in  finding  another  pilot ;  so  he  proposed 
that  I  should  stand  a  daylight  watch,  and  leave  the  night 
watches  to  George  Ealer.  But  I  was  afraid ;  I  had  never 
stood  a  watch  of  any  sort  by  myself,  and  I  believed  I  should 
be  sure  to  get  into  trouble  in  the  head  of  some  chute,  or 
ground  the  boat  in  a  near  cut  through  some  bar  or  other. 
Brown  remained  in  his  place ;  but  he  would  not  travel  with 
me.  So  the  captain  gave  me  an  order  on  the  captain  of  the 
"  A.  T.  Lacey,"  for  a  passage  to  St.  Louis,  and  said  he  would 
find  a  new  pilot  there  and  my  steersman's  berth  could  then 
be  resumed.  The  "  Lacey  "  was  to  leave  a  couple  of  da}rs 
after  the  "  Pennsylvania." 

The  night  before  the  "  Pennsylvania  "  left,  Henry  and  I  sat 
chatting  on  a  freight  pile  on  the  levee  till  midnight.  The 
subject  of  the  chat,  mainly,  was  one  which  I  think  we  had 
not  exploited  before  —  steamboat  disasters.  One  was  then 
on  its  way  to  us,  little  as  we  suspected  it ;  the  water  which 
was  to  make  the  steam  which  should  cause  it,  was  washing 
past  some  point  fifteen  hundred  miles  up  the  river  while  we 
talked ;  —  but  it  would  arrive  at  the  right  time  and  the  right 
place.  We  doubted  if  persons  not  clothed  with  authority 
were  of  much  use  in  cases  of  disaster  and  attendant  panic ; 
still,  they  might  be  of  some  use  ;  so  we  decided  that  if  a  dis- 
aster ever  fell  within  our  experience  we  would  at  least  stick 
to  the  boat,  and  give  such  minor  service  as  chance  might 
throw  in  the  way.  Henry  remembered  this,  afterward,  when 
the  disaster  came,  and  acted  accordingly. 


OUR   LAST   MEETING. 


237 


The  "  Lacey "  started  up  the  river  two  days  behind  the 
"  Pennsylvania."  We  touched  at  Greenville,  Mississippi,  a 
couple  of  days  out,  and  somebody  shouted  :  — 

"  The  '  Pennsylvania '  is  blown  up  at  Ship  Island,  and  a 
hundred  and  fifty  lives  lost !  " 

At  Napoleon,  Arkansas,  the  same  evening,  we  got  an 
extra,  issued  by  a  Memphis  paper,  which  gave  some  particu- 
lars. It  men- 
tioned my  broth- 
er, and  said  he 
was  not  hurt. 

Further  up  the 
river  we  got  a 
later  extra.  My 
brother  was  again 
mentioned  ;  but 
this  time  as  be- 
ing hurt  beyond 
help.  We  d  i  d 
not  get  full  de- 
tails of  the  catas- 
trophe until  we 
1  '  reached    Mem- 

phis.    This  is  the 
sorrowful  story :  — 

It  was  six  o'clock  on 
a  hot  summer  morning. 
The  "  Pennsylvania  "  was 
creeping  along,  north  of 
Ship  Island,  about  sixty 
miles  below  Memphis  on 
a  half-head  of  steam,  tow- 
ing a  wood-flat  which  was  fast  being  emptied.  George  Ealer 
was  in  the  pilot-house — alone,  I  think;  the  second  engineer 
and  a  striker  had  the  watch  in  the  engine  room  ;  the  second 
mate  had  the  watch  on  deck ;  George  Black,  Mr.  Wood,  and 


"HENRY   AND    I   SAT    CHATTING. 


238 


THE  EXPLOSION   COMES. 


my  brother,  clerks,  were  asleep,  as  were  also  Brown  and  the 

head  engineer,  the  carpenter,  the  chief  mate,  and  one  striker ; 

Capt.  Klinefelter  was  in  the  barber's  chair,  and  the  barber 

was  preparing  to  shave  him.    There  were  a 

good  many  cabin  passengers  aboard,  and 

three  or  lour  hundred  deck  passengers  — 

so  it  was  said  at  the  time  —  and  not  very 

many  of  them  were  astir.     The  wood  being 


EMPTYING   THE   WOOD-FLAT. 


nearly  all  out  of  the  flat  now,  Ealer  rang  to  "  come  ahead  " 
full  steam,  and  the  next  moment  four  of  the  eight  boilers 
exploded  with  a  thunderous  crash,  and  the  whole  forward 
third  of  the  boat  was  hoisted  toward  the  sky!     The  main 


FLUNG  ALOFT. 


239 


part  of  the  mass, 
with  the  chim- 
neys, dropped  up- 
on the  boat  again, 
a  mountain  of 
riddled*  and  cha- 
otic rubbish  — 
and  then,  after  a 
little,  fire  broke 
out. 


Many  people  were  flung 
to  considerable  distances, 
and  fell  in  the  river ; 
among  these  were  Mr. 
Wood  and  my  brother, 
and  the  carpenter.  The 
carpenter  was  still 
stretched  upon  his  mat- 
tress when  he  struck  the 
water  seventy-five  feet 
from  the  boat.  Brown, 
the  pilot,  and  George 
Black,  chief  clerk,  were 
never   seen  or   heard  of 


T 

A   STARTLED   BARBER. 


240 


EALER'S   FLUTE. 


after  the  explosion.  The  barber's  chair,  with  Captain  Kline- 
felter in  it  and  unhurt,  was  left  with  its  back  overhanging 
vacancy  —  everything  forward  of  it,  floor  and  all,  had  dis- 
appeared ;  and  the  stupefied  barber,  who  was  also  unhurt, 

stood  with  one  toe 
projecting  over  space, 
still  stirring  his  lath- 
er unconsciously,  and 
saying  not  a  word. 

When  George 
Ealer  saw  the  chim- 
neys plunging  aloft 
in  front  of  hirn,  he 
knew  what  the  mat- 
ter was ;  so  he  muf- 
fled his  face  in  the 
lapels  of  his  coat, 
a  n  d  pressed  both 
hands  there  tightly 
to  keep  this  protec- 
tion in  its  place  so 
that  no  steam  could 
get  to  his  nose  or 
mouth.  He  had  am- 
ple time  to  attend  to 
these  details  while  he 
was  going  up  and 
returning.  He  pres- 
ently landed  on  top 
of  the  unexploded 
boilers,  forty  feet  be- 
low the  former  pilot- 
house, accompanied 
by  his  wheel  and  a  rain  of  other  stuff,  and  enveloped  in  a 
cloud  of  scalding  steam.  All  of  the  many  who  breathed  that 
steam,  died ;  none  escaped.     But  Ealer  breathed  none  of  it. 


EALEIt   SAVES   HIS    FLUTE. 


ATTEMPTS   AT   RESCUE.  241 

He  made  his  way  to  the  free  air  as  quickly  as  he  could ;  and 
when  the  steam  cleared  away  he  returned  and  climbed  up 
on  the  boilers  again,  and  patiently  hunted  out  each  and  every 
one  of  his  chessmen  and  the  several  joints  of  his  flute. 

By  this  time  the  fire  was  beginning  to  threaten.  Shrieks 
and  groans  filled  the  air.  A  great  many  persons  had  been 
scalded,  a  great  many  crippled ;  the  explosion  had  driven  an 
iron  crowbar  through  one  man's  body — I  think  they  said  he 
was  a  priest.  He  did  not  die  at  once,  and  his  sufferings 
were  very  dreadful.  A  young  French  naval  cadet,  of  fif- 
teen, son  of  a  French  admiral,  was  fearfully  scalded,  but 
bore  his  tortures  manfully.  Both  mates  were  badly  scalded, 
but  they  stood  to  their  posts,  nevertheless.  They  drew  the 
wood-boat  aft,  and  they  and  the  captain  fought  back  the 
frantic  herd  of  frightened  immigrants  till  the  wounded  could 
be  brought  there  and  placed  in  safety  first. 

When  Mr.  Wood  and  Henry  fell  in  the  water,  they  struck 
out  for  shore,  which  was  only  a  few  hundred  yards  away ; 
but  Henry  presently  said  he  believed  he  was  not  hurt,  (what 
an  unaccountable  error !)  and  therefore  would  swim  back  to 
the  boat  and  help  save  the  wounded.  So  they  parted,  and 
Henry  returned. 

By  this  time  the  fire  was  making  fierce  headway,  and 
several  persons  who  were  imprisoned  under  the  ruins  were 
begging  piteously  for  help.  All  efforts  to  conquer  the  fire 
proved  fruitless  ;  so  the  buckets  were  presently  thrown  aside 
and  the  officers  fell-to  with  axes  and  tried  to  cut  the  pris- 
oners out.  A  striker  was  one  of  the  captives;  he  said  he 
was  not  injured,  but  could  not  free  himself;  and  when 
he  saw  that  the  fire  was  likely  to  drive  away  the  workers,  he 
begged  that  some  one  would  shoot  him,  and  thus  save  him 
from  the  more  dreadful  death.  The  fire  did  drive  the  axe- 
men away,  and  they  had  to  listen,  helpless,  to  this  poor  fel- 
low's supplications  till  the  flames  ended  his  miseries. 

The  fire  drove  all  into  the  wood-flat  that  could  be  accom- 
modated there  ;  it  was  cut  adrift,  then,  and  it  and  the  burn- 

16 


242 


HELP  FROM  MEMPHIS. 


ing  steamer  floated  down  the  river  toward  Ship  Island. 
They  moored  the  flat  at  the  head  of  the  island,  and  there, 
unsheltered  from  the  blazing  sun,  the  half-naked  occupants 
had   to   remain,   without   food    or    stimulants,    or  help   for 


THE    FIRE    DROVE    THE    AXEMEN    AWAY. 

their  hurts,  during  the  rest  of  the  day.  A  steamer  came 
along,  finally,  and  carried  the  unfortunates  to  Memphis, 
and  there  the  most  lavish  assistance  was  at  ouce  forth- 
coming. By  this  time  Henry  was  insensible.  The  physi- 
cians examined  his  injuries  and  saw  that  they  were  fatal> 


AN  IMPROMPTU  HOSPITAL.  243 

and  naturally  turned  their  main  attention  to  patients  who 
could  be  saved. 

Forty  of  the  wounded  were  placed  upon  pallets  on  the 
floor  of  a  great  public  hall,  and  among  these  was  Henry. 
There  the  ladies  of  Memphis  came  every  day,  with  flowers, 
fruits,  and  dainties  and  delicacies  of  all  kinds,  and  there 
they  remained  and  nursed  the  wounded.  All  the  physicians 
stood  watches  there,  and  all  the  medical  students ;  and  the 
rest  of  the  town  -furnished  money,  or  whatever  else  was 
wanted.  And  Memphis  knew  how  to  do  all  these  things 
well ;  for  many  a  disaster  like  the  "  Pennsylvania's  "  had  hap- 
pened near  her  doors,  and  she  was  experienced,  above  all 
other  cities  on  the  river,  in  the  gracious  office  of  the  Good 
Samaritan. 

The  sight  I  saw  when  I  entered  that  large  hall  was  new 
and  strange  to  me.  Two  long  rows  of  prostrate  forms  — 
more  than  forty,  in  all  —  and  every  face  and  head  a  shape- 
less wad  of  loose  raw  cotton.  It  was  a  grewsome  spectacle. 
T  watched  there  six  days  and  nights,  and  a  very  melancholy 
experience  it  was.  There  was  one  daily  incident  which  was 
peculiarly  depressing :  this  was  the  removal  of  the  doomed 
to  a  chamber  apart.  It  was  done  in  order  that  the  morale 
of  the  other  patients  might  not  be  injuriously  affected  by 
seeing  one  of  their  number  in  the  death-agony.  The  fated 
one  was  always  carried  out  with  as  little  stir  as  possible, 
and  the  stretcher  was  always  hidden  from  sight  by  a  wall 
of  assistants  ;  but  no  matter :  everybody  knew  what  that 
cluster  of  bent  forms,  with  its  muffled  step  and  its  slow 
movement  meant ;  and  all  eyes  watched  it  wistfully,  and  a 
shudder  went  abreast  of  it  like  a  wave. 

I  saw  many  poor  fellows  removed  to  the  "  death-room," 
and  saw  them  no  more  afterward.  But  I  saw  our  chief  mate 
carried  thither  more  than  once.  His  hurts  were  frightful, 
especially  his  scalds.  He  was  clothed  in  linseed  oil  and  raw 
cotton  to  his  waist,  and  resembled  nothing  human.  He  was 
often  out  of  his  mind ;  and  then  his  pains  would  make  him 


244 


OUT  OF  HIS  HEAD. 


rave  and  shout  and  sometimes  shriek.  Then,  after  a  period 
of  dumb  exhaustion,  his  disordered  imagination  would  sud- 
denly transform  the  great  apartment  into  a  forecastle,  and 
the  hurrying  throng  of  nurses  into  the  crew ;  and  he  would 

come  to  a  sitting  posture 
and   shout,  "  Hump   your- 
y  ourselves, 


m 


THE    HOSPITAL   WARD. 


you  petrifactions,  snail-bellies,  pall-bearers!  going  to  be  all 
day  getting  that  hatful  of  freight  out  ? "  and  supplement 
this  explosion  with  a  firmament-obliterating  irruption  of 
profanity  which  nothing  could  stay  or  stop  till  his  crater 
was  empty.     And  now  and  then  while  these  frenzies  pos- 


THE   LAST   OF  EARTH.  245 

sessed  him,  he  would  tear  off  handfuls  of  the  cotton  and 
expose  his  cooked  flesh  to  view.  It  was  horrible.  It 
was  bad  for  the  others,  of  course  —  this  noise  and  these 
exhibitions  ;  so  the  doctors  tried  to  give  him  morphine  to 
quiet  him.  But,  in  his  mind  or  out  of  it,  he  would  not  take 
it.  He  said  his  wife  had  been  killed  by  that  treacherous 
drug,  and  he  would  die  before  he  would  take  it.  He  sus- 
pected that  the  doctors  were  concealing  it  in  his  ordinary 
medicines  and  in  his  water  —  so  he  ceased  from  putting 
either  to  his  lips.  Once,  when  he  had  been  without  water 
during  two  sweltering  days,  he  took  the  dipper  in  his  hand, 
and  the  sight  of  the  limpid  fluid,  and  the  misery  of  his 
thirst,  tempted  him  almost  beyond  his  strength  ;  but  he 
mastered  himself  and  threw  it  away,  and  after  that  he 
allowed  no  more  to  be  brought  near  him.  Three  times  I 
saw  him  carried  to  the  death-room,  insensible  and  supposed 
to  be  dying;  but  each  time  he  revived,  cursed  his  attend- 
ants, and  demanded  to  be  taken  back.  He  lived  to  be  mate 
of  a  steamboat  again. 

But  he  was  the  only  one  who  went  to  the  death-room  and 
returned  alive.  Dr.  Peyton,  a  principal  physician,  and  rich 
in  all  the  attributes  that  go  to  constitute  high  and  flawless 
character,  did  all  that  educated  judgment  and  trained  skill 
could  do  for  Henry  ;  but,  as  the  newspapers  had  said  in  the 
beginning,  his  hurts  were  past  help.  On  the  evening  of  the 
sixth  day  his  wandering  mind  busied  itself  with  matters 
far  away,  and  his  nerveless  fingers  "  picked  at  his  coverlet." 
His  hour  had  struck  ;  we  bore  him  to  the  death-room,  poor 
boy. 


CHAPTER   XXI. 

A  SECTION  IN  MY  BIOGRAPHY. 

IN  due  course  I  got  my  license.  1  was  a  pilot  now,  full 
fledged.  I  dropped  into  casual  employments  ;  no  mis- 
fortunes resulting,  intermittent  work  gave  place  to  steady 
and  protracted  engagements.  Time  drifted  smoothly  and 
prosperously  on,  and  I  supposed  —  and  hoped  —  that  I  was 
going  to  follow  the  river  the  rest  of  my  days,  and  die  at  the 
wheel  when  my  mission  was  ended.  But  by  and  by  the  war 
came,  commerce  was  suspended,  my  occupation  was  gone. 

I  had  to  seek  another  livelihood.  So  I  became  a  silver 
miner  in  Nevada  ;  next,  a  newspaper  reporter  ;  next,  a  gold 
miner,  in  California ;  next,  a  reporter  in  San  Francisco ; 
next,  a  special  correspondent  in  the  Sandwich  Islands  ;  next, 
a  roving  correspondent  in  Europe  and  the  East ;  next,  an 
instructional  torch-bearer  on  the  lecture  platform ;  and, 
finally,  I  became  a  scribbler  of  books,  and  an  immovable 
fixture  among  the  other  rocks  of  New  England. 

In  so  few  words  have  I  disposed  of  the  twenty-one  slow- 
drifting  years  that  have  come  and  gone  since  I  last  looked 
from  the  windows  of  a  pilot-house. 

Let  us  resume,  now. 


CHAPTER   XXII. 


I  RETURN   TO   MY   MUTTONS. 


AFTER  twenty-one  years'  absence,  I  felt  a  very  strong 
desire  to  see  the  river  again,  and  the  steamboats,  and 
such  of  the  boys  as  might  be  left ;  so  I  resolved  to  go  out 
there.  I  enlisted  a  poet  for  company,  and  a  stenographer 
to  "  take  him  down,"  and  started  westward  about  the  middle 
of  April. 

As  I  proposed  to  make  notes,  with  a  view  to  printing,  I 
took  some  thought  as  to  methods  of  procedure.  I  reflected 
that  if  I  were  recognized,  on  the  river,  I  should  not  be  as 
free  to  go  and  come,  talk,  inquire,  and  spy  around,  as  I  should 
be  if  unknown  ;  I  remembered  that  it  was  the  custom  of 
steamboatmen  in  the  old  times  to  load  up  the  confiding 
stranger  with  the  most  picturesque  and  admirable  lies,  and 
put  the  sophisticated  friend  off  with  dull  and  ineffectual  facts : 
so  I  concluded,  that,  from  a  business  point  of  view,  it  would 
be  an  advantage  to  disguise  our  party  with  fictitious  names. 
The  idea  was  certainly  good,  but  it  bred  infinite  bother; 
for  although  Smith,  Jones,  and  Johnson  are  easy  names  to 
remember  when  there  is  no  occasion  to  remember  them,  it  is 
next  to  impossible  to  recollect  them  when  they  are  wanted. 
How  do  criminals  manage  to  keep  a  brand-new  alias  in 
mind  ?  This  is  a  great  mystery.  I  was  innocent ;  and  yet 
was  seldom  able  to  lay  my  hand  on  my  new  name  when  it 
was  needed  ;  and  it  seemed  to  me  that  if  I  had  had  a  crime 
on  my  conscience  to  further  confuse  me,  I  could  never  have 
kept  the  name  by  me  at  all. 


248 


WESTWAED   HO. 


We  left  per  Pennsylvania  Railroad,  at  8  a.  m.  April  18. 

"  Evening.  Speaking  of  dress.  Grace  and  picturesqueness  drop 
gradually  out  of  it  as  one  travels  away  from  New  York." 

I  find  that  among  my  notes.  It  makes  no  difference 
which  direction  you  take,  the  fact  remains  the  same.  Whether 
you  move  north,  south,  east, or  west,  no  matter  :  you  can  get 
up  in  the  morning  and  guess  how  far  you  have  come,  by 
noting  what  degree  of  grace  and  picturesqueness  is  by  that 
time  lacking  in  the  costumes  of  the  new  passengers  ;  —  I  do 
not  mean  of  the  women  alone,  but  of  both  sexes.  It  may  be 
that  carriage  is  at  the  bottom  of  this  thing ;  and  I  think  it 
is ;  for  there  are  plenty  of  ladies  and  gentlemen  in  the 
provincial  cities  whose  garments  are  all  made  by  the  best 
tailors    and    dressmakers    of   New  York  ;    yet  this   has  no 


THE    LAND   OP   FULL    "  GOATEES." 

perceptible  effect  upon  the  grand  fact :  the  educated  eye 
never  mistakes  those  people  for  New-Yorkers.  No,  there  is 
a  godless  grace,  and  snap,  and  style  about  a  born  and  bred 
New-Yorker  which  mere  clothing  cannot  effect. 

"April  19.  This  morning,  struck  into  the  region  of  full  goatees 
—  sometimes  accompanied  by  a  moustache,  but  only  occasionally." 

It  was  odd  to  come  upon  this  thick  crop  of  an  obsolete 
and  uncomely  fashion  ;  it  was  like  running  suddenly  across 
a  forgotten  acquaintance  whom  you  had  supposed  dead  for  a 


THE  GOATEE  LAND. 


249 


generation.  The  goatee  extends  over  a  wide  extent  of  coun- 
try ;  and  is  accompanied  by  an  iron-clad  belief  in  Adam  and 
the  biblical  history  of  creation,  which  has  not  suffered  from 
the  assaults  of  the  scientists. 

"  Afternoon.   At  the  railway  stations  the  loafers  carry  both  hands 
in  their  breeches  pockets  ;  it  was  observable,     heretofore,  that  one 
hand   was    sometimes    out   of   doors,  —  here, 
never.     This  is   an  important   fact   in  geog- 
raphy." 

If  the  loafers  determined  the  character 
of    a  country,  it  would  be  still  more 
important,  of  course. 

"Heretofore,  all  along,  the  station- 
loafer  has  been  often  ob- 
served to  scratch  one  shin 
with  the  other  foot ;  here, 
these  remains  of  activity  are 
wanting.  This  has  an  omi- 
nous look." 


By  and  by,  we  entered 
the  tobacco-chewing  re- 
gion. Fifty  years  ago,  the  tobacco- 
chewing  region  covered  the  Union.  It 
is  greatly  restricted  now. 
boots  began  to  appear.  Not  in  strong 
however.  Later — away  down  the  Mis- 
—  they  became  the  rule.  They  disap- 
from  other  sections  of  the  Union  with  the 
no  doubt  they  will  disappear  from  the 
villages,  also,  when  proper  pavements 
in. 
Louis  at  ten    o'clock  at  night.     At  the 


Next, 
force, 
sissippi 
peared 
mud  ; 
river 
come 

We  reached  St 
counter  of  the  hotel  I  tendered  a  hurriedly-invented  fictitious 
name,  with  a  miserable  attempt  at  careless  ease.     The  clerk 


STATION 
LOAEEBS. 


250 


UNPROMISING  FRAUD. 


paused,  and  inspected  me  in  the  compassionate  way  in  which 
one  inspects  a  respectable  person  who  is  found  in  doubtful 
circumstances  ;  then  he  said,  — 

"  It 's  all  right ;  I  know  what  sort  of  a  room  you  want. 
Used  to  clerk  at  the  St.  James,  in  New  York." 

A  n  unpromising 
beginning  for  a 
fraudulent  career. 
We  started  to  the 
supper  room,  and 
met  two  other  men 
whom  I  had  known 
elsewhere.  How  odd 
and  unfair  it  is  : 
wicked  impostors  go 
around  lecturing  un- 
der my  nom  de  guerre, 
and  nobody  suspects 
them;  but  when  an 
honest  man  attempts 
an  imposture,  he  is 
exposed  at  once. 

One  thing  seemed 
plain :  we  must  start 
down  the  river  the 
next  day,  if  people 
who  could  not  be  deceived  were  going  to  crop  up  at  this 
rate  :  an  unpalatable  disappointment,  for  we  had  hoped  to 
have  a  week  in  St.  Louis.  The  Southern  was  a  good  hotel, 
and  we  could  have  had  a  comfortable  time  there.  It  is 
large,  and  well  conducted,  and  its  decorations  do  not 
make  one  cry,  as  do  those  of  the  vast  Palmer  House,  in 
Chicago.  True,  the  billiard-tables  were  of  the  Old  Silurian 
Period,  and  the  cues  and  balls  of  the  Post-Pliocene  ;  but 
there  was  refreshment  in  this,  not  discomfort ;  for  there  is 
rest  and  healing  in  the  contemplation  of  antiquities. 


UNDER   AN   ALIAS. 


ROGERS   WEEPS. 


251 


The  most  notable  absence  observable  in  the  billiard  room, 
was  the  absence  of  the  river  man.  If  he  was  there  he  had 
taken  in  his  sign,  he  was  in  disguise.  I  saw  there  none  of  the 
swell  airs  and  graces,  and  ostentatious  displays  of  money,  and 
pompous  squanderings  of  it,  which  used  to  distinguish  the 
steamboat  crowd  from  the  dry-land  crowd  in  the  bygone  days, 
in  the  thronged  billiard-rooms  of 
St.  Louis.  In  those  times,  the  prin- 
cipal saloons  were  always  populous 
with  river  men ;  given  fifty  play- 
ers present,  thirty  or  thirty-five 
were  likely  to  be  from 
the  river.  But  I  sus- 
pected that  the  ranks 
were  thin  now,  and 
the  steamboatmen  no 
longer  an  aristocracy. 
Why,  in  my  time  they 
used  to  call  the  "  bar- 
keep  "  Bill,  or  Joe,  or 
Tom,  and  slap  him  on 
the  shoulder  ;  I  watched 
for  that.  But  none  of 
these  people  did  it.  Manifestly 
a  glory  that  once  was  had  dis- 
solved and  vanished  away  in 
these  twenty-one  years. 

When  I  went  up  to  my  room, 
I  found  there  the  young  man 
called  Rogers,  crying.  Rogers 
was  not  his  name  ;  neither  was  Jones,  Brown,  Dexter,  Fergu- 
son, Bascom,  nor  Thompson ;  but  he  answered  to  either  of  these 
that  a  body  found  handy  in  an  emergency ;  or  to  any  other 
name,  in  fact,  if  he  perceived  that  you  meant  him.    He  said :  — 

"  What  is  a  person  to  do  here  when  he  wants  a  drink  of 
water  ?  —  drink  this  slush  ?  " 


"do  you  drink  this  slush?' 


252  WATER   GRUEL. 

"  Can't  you  drink  it  ?  " 

"  I  could  if  I  had  some  other  water  to  wash  it  with." 

Here  was  a  thing  which  had  not  changed  ;  a  score  of 
years  had  not  affected  this  water's  mulatto  complexion  in  the 
least ;  a  score  of  centuries  would  succeed  no  better,  perhaps. 
It  comes  out  of  the  turbulent,  bank-caving  Missouri,  and 
every  tumblerful  of  it  holds  nearly  an  acre  of  land  in  solu- 
tion. I  got  this  fact  from  the  bishop  of  the  diocese.  If  you 
will  let  your  glass  stand  half  an  hour,  you  can  separate  the 
land  from  the  water  as  easy  as  Genesis ;  and  then  you  will 
find  them  both  good  :  the  one  good  to  eat,  the  other  good  to 
drink.  The  land  is  very  nourishing,  the  water  is  thoroughly 
wholesome.  The  one  appeases  hunger  ;  the  other,  thirst. 
But  the  natives  do  not  take  them  separately,  but  together, 
as  nature  mixed  them.  When  they  find  an  inch  of  mud  in 
the  bottom  of  a  glass,  they  stir  it  up,  and  then  take  the 
draught  as  they  would  gruel.  It  is  difficult  for  a  stranger  to 
get  used  to  this  batter,  but  once  used  to  it  he  will  prefer  it 
to  water.  This  is  really  the  case.  It  is.  good  for  steamboat- 
ing,  and  good  to  drink  ;  but  it  is  worthless  for  all  other  pur- 
poses, except  baptizing. 

Next  morning,  we  drove  around  town  in  the  rain.  The 
city  seemed  but  little  changed.  It  was  greatly  changed,  but 
it  did  not  seem  so  ;  because  in  St.  Louis,  as  in  London  and 
Pittsburgh,  you  can't  persuade  a  new  thing  to  look  new  ;  the 
coal  smoke  turns  it  into  an  antiquity  the  moment  you  take 
your  hand  off  it.  The  place  had  just  about  doubled  its  size, 
since  I  was  a  resident  of  it,  and  was  now  become  a  city  of 
400,000  inhabitants ;  still,  in  the  solid  business  parts,  it  looked 
about  as  it  had  looked  formerly.  Yet  I  am  sure  there  is  not 
as  much  smoke  in  St.  Louis  now  as  there  used  to  be.  The 
smoke  used  to  bank  itself  in  a  dense  billowy  black  canopy  over 
the  town,  and  hide  the  sky  from  view.  This  shelter  is  very 
much  thinner  now  ;  still,  there  is  a  sufficiency  of  smoke 
there,  I  think.     I  heard  no  complaint. 

However,  on  the  outskirts  changes  were  apparent  enough ; 


A  NEW   CITY.  253 

notably  in  dwelling-house  architecture.  The  fine  new  homes 
are  noble  and  beautiful  and  modern.  They  stand  by  them- 
selves, too,  with  green  lawns  around  them  ;  whereas  the 
dwellings  of  a  former  day  are  packed  together  in  blocks, 
and  are  all  of  one  pattern,  with  windows  all  alike,  set  in  an 
arched  frame-work  of  twisted  stone ;  a  sort  of  house  which 
was  handsome  enough  when  it  was  rarer. 

There  was  another  change  —  the  Forest  Park.  This  was 
new  to  me.  It  is  beautiful  and  very  extensive,  and  has  the 
excellent  merit  of  having  been  made  mainly  by  nature. 
There  are  other  parks,  and  fine  ones,  notably  Tower  Grove 
and  the  Botanical  Gardens  ;  for  St.  Louis  interested  her- 
self in  such  improvements  at  an  earlier  day  than  did  the 
most  of  our  cities. 

The  first  time  I  ever  saw  St.  Louis,  I  could  have  bought  it 
for  six  million  dollars,  and  it  was  the  mistake  of  my  life 
that  I  did  not  do  it.  It  was  bitter  now  to  look  abroad  over 
this  domed  and  stespled  metropolis,  this  solid  expanse  of 
bricks  and  mortar  stretching  away  on  every  hand  into  dim, 
measure-defying  distances,  and  remember  that  I  had  allowed 
that  opportunity  to  go  by.  Why  I  should  have  allowed  it  to 
go  by  seems,  of  course,  foolish  and  inexplicable  to-day,  at  a 
first  glance  ;  yet  there  were  reasons  at  the  time  to  justify 
this  course. 

A  Scotchman,  Hon.  Charles  Augustus  Murray,  writing 
some  forty-five  or  fifty  years  ago,  said  :  "  The  streets  are 
narrow,  ill  pave^d  and  ill  lighted."  Those  streets  are  narrow 
still,  of  course  ;  many  of  them  are  ill  paved  yet ;  but  the  re- 
proach of  ill  lighting  cannot  be  repeated,  now.  The  "  Catholic 
New  Church  "  was  the  only  notable  building  then,  and  Mr. 
Murray  was  confidently  called  upon  to  admire  it,  with  its 
"  species  of  Grecian  portico,  surmounted  by  a  kind  of  steeple, 
much  too  diminutive  in  its  proportions,  and  surmounted  by 
sundry  ornaments  "  which  the  unimaginative  Scotchman  found 
himself  "  quite  unable  to  describe  ; "  and  therefore  was  grate- 
ful when  a  German  tourist  helped  him  out  with  the  exclama- 


254 


STEAMBOATS   ASLEEP. 


tion  :  "  By  — ,  they  look  exactly  like  bed-posts  !  "  St.  Louis 
is  well  equipped  with  stately  and  noble  public  buildings  now, 
and  the  little  church,  which  the  people  used  to  be  so  proud  of, 
lost  its  importance  a  long  time  ago.  Still,  this  would  not  sur- 
prise Mr.  Murray,  if  he  could  come  back ;  for  he  prophesied 
the  coming  greatness  of  St.  Louis  with  strong  confidence. 

The  further  we  drove  in  our  inspection-tour,  the  more 
sensibly  I  realized  how  the  city  had  grown  since  I  had  seen 
it  last ;  changes  in  detail  became  steadily  more  apparent  and 
frequent  than  at  first,  too  :  changes  uniformly  evidencing  pro- 
gress, energy,  prosperity. 

But  the  chano-e  of  changes  was  on  the  "levee."    This  time, 


SOUND-ASLEEP   STEAMBOATS. 

a  departure  from  the  rule.  Half  a 
dozen  sound-asleep  steamboats  where 
I  used  to  see  a  solid  mile  of  wide-awake  ones  !  This  was 
melancholy,  this  was  woful.  The  absence  of  the  pervading 
and  jocund  steamboatman  from  the  billiard-saloon  was  ex- 
plained. He  was  absent  because  he  is  no  more.  His  occu- 
pation is  gone,  his  power  has  passed  away,  he  is  absorbed 


DESOLATION. 


255 


into  the  common  herd,  he  grinds  at  the  mill,  a  shorn  Samson 
and  inconspicuous.  Half  a  dozen  lifeless  steamboats,  a  mile 
of  empty  wharves,  a  negro  fatigued  with  whiskey  stretched 
asleep,  in  a  wide  and  soundless  vacancy,  where  the  serried 
hosts  of  commerce  used  to  contend  ! 1  Here  was  desolation, 
indeed. 

"  The  old,  old  sea,  as  one  in  tears, 

Comes  murmuring,  with  foamy  lips, 
And  knocking  at  the  vacant  piers, 

Calls  for  his  long-lost  multitude  of  ships." 

The  towboat  and  the  railroad  had  done  their  work,  and 


DEAD   PAST   RESURRECTION. 


clone  it  well  and  com- 
pletely.    The    mighty 
bridge,  stretching  along 
over  our  heads,  had  done 
its  share  in  the  slaughter  and 
spoliation.  Remains  of  former 


1  Capt.  Marryat,  writing  forty-five  years  ago,  says  :  "  St.  Louis  has  20,000 
inhabitants.  The  river  abreast  of  the  town  is  crowded  with  steamboats,  lying  in  two 
or  three  tiers." 


256  THE   RIVER  FRONT. 

steamboatmen  told  me,  with  wan  satisfaction,  that  the  bridge 
does  n't  pay.  Still,  it  can  be  no  sufficient  compensation  to 
a  corpse,  to  know  that  the  dynamite  that  laid  him  out  was 
not  of  as  good  quality  as  it  had  been  supposed  to  be. 

The  pavements  along  the  river  front  were  bad ;  the  side- 
walks were  rather  out  of  repair ;  there  was  a  rich  abundance 
of  mud.  All  this  was  familiar  and  satisfying;  but  the 
ancient  armies  of  drays,  and  struggling  throngs  of  men,  and 
mountains  of  freight,  were  gone ;  and  Sabbath  reigned  in 
their  stead.  The  immemorial  mile  of  cheap  foul  doggeries 
remained,  but  business  was  dull  with  them  ;  the  multitudes 
of  poison-swilling  Irishmen  had  departed,  and  in  their  places 
were  a  few  scattering  handfuls  of  ragged  negroes,  some 
drinking,  some  drunk,  some  nodding,  others  asleep.  St. 
Louis  is  a  great  and  prosperous  and  advancing  city ;  but  the 
river-edge  of  it  seems  dead  past  resurrection. 

Mississippi  steamboating  was  born  about  1812  ;  at  the  end 
of  thirty  years,  it  had  grown  to  mighty  proportions  ;  and  in 
less  than  thirty  more,  it  was  dead!  A  strangely  short  life 
for  so  majestic  a  creature.  Of  course  it  is  not  absolutely 
dead ;  neither  is  a  crippled  octogenarian  who  could  once 
jump  twenty-two  feet  on  level  ground ;  but  as  contrasted 
with  what  it  was  in  its  prime  vigor,  Mississippi  steamboating 
may  be  called  dead. 

It  killed  the  old-fashioned  keel-boating,  by  reducing  the 
freight-trip  to  New  Orleans  to  less  than  a  week.  The  rail- 
roads have  killed  the  steamboat  passenger  traffic  by  doing  in 
two  or  three  days  what  the  steamboats  consumed  a  week 
in  doine; ;  and  the  towino;-fleets  have  killed  the  through- 
freight  traffic  by  dragging  six  or  seven  steamer-loads  of  stuff 
down  the  river  at  a  time,  at  an  expense  so  trivial  that 
steamboat  competition  was  out  of  the  question. 

Freight  and  passenger  way-traffic  remains  to  the  steamers. 
This  is  in  the  hands  —  along  the  two  thousand  miles  of 
river  between  St.  Paul  and  New  Orleans  —  of  two  or  three 
close  corporations  well  fortified  with  capital ;    and  by  able 


THE   WOOD-YARD  MAN. 


257 


and  thoroughly  business-like  management  and  system,  these 
make  a  sufficiency  of  money  out  of  what  is  left  of  the  once 
prodigious  steamboating  industry.  I  sup- 
pose that  St.  Louis  and  New  Orleans  have 
not  suffered  materially  by  the  change,  but 

alas  for  the 
^pr     wood -yard 
man! 


is  a  wood-pile. 


He  used  to  fringe 
the  river  all  the 
way;  his  close- 
ranked  merchan- 
dise stretched  from 
the  one  city  to  the 
other,  along  the 
banks,  and  he  sold 
uncountable  cords 
of  it  every  year  for 
cash  on  the  nail ; 
but  all  the  scatter- 
ing boats  that  are 
left  burn  coal  now, 
and  the  seldomest 
spectacle  on  the 
Mississippi  to-day 
Where  now  is  the  once  wood-yard  man  ? 


"''*ty  .he' 

THE   WOOD-YARD   MAN. 


17 


CHAPTER  XXIII. 


TRAVELLING   INCOGNITO. 


MY  idea  was,  to  tarry  a  while  in  every  town  between  St. 
Louis  and  New  Orleans.  To  do  this,  it  would  be 
necessary  to  go  from  place  to  place  by  the  short  packet  lines. 
It  was  an  easy  plan  to  make,  and  would  have  been  an  easy 
one  to  follow,  twenty  years  ago  —  but  not  now.  There  are 
wide  intervals  between  boats,  these  days. 

•I  wanted  to  begin  with  the  interesting  old  French  settle- 
ments of  St.  Genevieve  and  Kaskaskia,  sixty  miles  below  St. 
Louis.  There  was  only  one  boat  advertised  for  that  section 
—  a  Grand  Tower  packet.  Still,  one  boat  was  enough ;  so 
we  went  down  to  look  at  her.  She  was  a  venerable  rack- 
heap,  and  a  fraud  to  boot ;  for  she  was  playing  herself  for 
personal  property,  whereas  the  good  honest  dirt  was  so 
thickly  caked  all  over  her  that  she  was  righteously  taxable 
as  real  estate.  There  are  places  in  New  England  where  her 
hurricane  deck  would  be  worth  a  hundred  and  fifty  dollars 
an  acre.  The  soil  on  her  forecastle  was  quite  good  —  the 
new  crop  of  wheat  was  already  springing  from  the  cracks  in 
protected  places.  The  companionway  was  of  a  dry  sandy 
character,  and  would  have  been  well  suited  for  grapes,  with 
a  southern  exposure  and  a  little  subsoiling.  The  soil  of  the 
boiler  deck  was  thin  and  rocky,  but  good  enough  for  grazing 
purposes.  A  colored  boy  was  on  watch  here — nobody  else 
visible.  We  gathered  from  him  that  this  calm  craft  would 
go,  as  advertised,  "  if  she  got  her  trip;"  if  she  didn't  get  it, 
she  would  wait  for  it. 


WE   TAKE   THE   "GOLD   DUST." 


259 


"  Has  she  got  any  of  her  trip  ?  " 

"  Bless  you,  no,  boss.     She  ain't  unloadened,  yit.     She 
only  come  in  dis  mawnin'." 

He  was  uncertain  as  to  when  she  might  get  her  trip,  but 
thought  it  might  be  to-morrow  or  maybe  next  day.  This 
would  not  answer  at 
all  ;  so  we  had  to 
give  up  the  novelty 
of  sailing  down  the 
river  on  a  farm. 
We  had  one  more 
arrow  in  our  quiver  : 
a  Vicksburg  packet, 
the  "  Gold  Dust," 
was  to  leave  at  5 
p.m.  We  took  pas- 
sage in  her  for  Mem- 
phis, and  gave  up  the 
idea  of  stopping  off 
here  and  there,  as 
being  impracticable. 
She  was  neat,  clean, 
and  comfortable. 
We  camped  on  the 
boiler  deck,  and 
bought  some  cheap 
literature  to  kill 
time  with.  The  ven- 
der was  a  venerable 
Irishman  with  a  benevolent  face  and  a  tongue  that  worked 
easily  in  the  socket,  and  from  him  we  learned  that  he  had 
lived  in  St.  Louis  thirty-four  years  and  had  never  been  across 
the  river  during  that  period.  Then  he  wandered  into  a  very 
flowing  lecture,  filled  with  classic  names  and  allusions, -which 
was  quite  wonderful  for  fluency  until  the  fact  became  rather 
apparent  that  this  was  not  the  first  time,  nor  perhaps  the 


WAITING  FOR  A  TRIP. 


260 


LAGER    VS.    WHISKEY. 


fiftieth,  that  the  speech  had  been  delivered.     He  was  a  good 
deal  of  a  character,  and  much  better  company  than  the  sappy 

literature  he  was  selling. 
A  random  remark,  con- 
necting Irishmen  and 
beer,  brought  this  nug- 
get of  information  out 
of  him :  — 

"  They  don't  drink  it, 
They  can't  drink  it, 
Give  an  Irishman 
lager   for   a   month, 
and     he  's     a    dead 
man.     An  Irishman 
is  lined  with  copper, 
and  the  beer  corrodes 
it.     But  whiskey  pol- 
ishes the  copper 
and  is  the  saving 
of  him,  sir." 

At  eight  o'- 
clock, promptly, 
we  backed  out 
and — crossed  the 
river.  As  we 
crept  toward  the 
shore,  in  the  thick 
darkness,  a  blind- 
ing glory  of  white 
electric  light 
burst  suddenly 
from  our  fore- 
castle, and  lit  up 
the  water  and  the  warehouses  as  with  a  noon-day  glare. 
Another  big  change,  this,  — no  more  flickering,  smoky, 
pitch-dripping,  ineffectual  torch-baskets,  now:  their  day  is 


THE   ELECTRIC    LIGHT. 


MODERN   IMPROVEMENTS. 


261 


past.  Next,  instead  of  calling  out  a  score  of  hands  to 
man  the  stage,  a  couple  of  men  and  a  hatful  of  steam 
lowered  it  from  the  derrick  where  it  was  suspended, 
launched  it,  deposited  it  in  just  the  right  spot,  and  the 
whole  thing  was  over  and  done-with  before  a  mate  in  the 
olden  time  could  have  got  his  profanity-mill  adjusted  to 
begin  the  preparatory  services.  Why  this  new  and  simple 
method  of  handling  the  stages  was  not  thought  of  when 
the  first  steamboat  was  built,  is  a  mystery  which  helps 
one  to  realize  what  a  dull-witted  slug  the  average  human 
being  is. 

We  finally  got  away  at  two  in  the  morning,  and  when  I 
turned  out  at  six, 
we  were  round- 
ing to  at  a  rocky 
point  where  there 
was  an  old  stone 
warehouse  —  at 
any  rate,  the 
ruins  of  it;  two 


or  three  decayed  dwel- 
ling-houses   were    near 
by,  in  the  shelter  of  the 
a  landing.  leafy   hills  ;    but    there 

were  no  evidences  of 
human  or  other  animal  life  to  be  seen.  I  wondered  if  I 
had  forgotten  the  river ;  for  I  had  no  recollection  whatever 
of  this  place ;  the  shape  of  the  river,  too,  was  unfamiliar ; 


262 


MODEKN  TRAVELLERS. 


there  was  nothing  in  sight,  anywhere,  that  I  could  remember 
ever  having  seen  before.  I  was  surprised,  disappointed,  and 
annoyed. 

We  put  ashore  a  well-dressed  lady  and  gentleman,  and  two 
well-dressed,  lady-like  young  girls,  together  with  sundry 
Russia-leather  bags.  A  strange  place  for  such  folk!  No 
carriage  was  waiting.  The  party  moved  off  as  if  they  had 
not  expected  any,  and  struck  down  a  winding  country  road 
afoot. 

But  the  mystery  was  explained  when  we  got  under  way 

again ;  for  these  people 
were  evidently  bound 
for  a  large  town  which 
lay  shut  in  behind  a 
tow-head  (i.  e.,  new 
island)  a  couple  of 
miles  below  this  land- 
ing. I  could  n't  re- 
member that  town ; 
I  could  n't  place  it, 
could  n't  call  its  name. 
So  I  lost  part  of  my 
temper.  I  suspected 
that  it  might  be  St. 
Genevieve  —  and  so  it 
proved  to  be.  Observe 
what  this  eccentric  river 
had  been  about :  it  had 
built  up  this  huge  use- 
less tow-head  directly  in 
front  of  this  town,  cut 
off  its  river  communi- 
cations, fenced  it  away 
completely,  and  made  a  "  country "  town  of  it.  It  is  a 
fine  old  place,  too,  and  deserved  a  better  fate.  It  was 
settled  by  the  French,  and  is  a  relic  of  a  time  when  one 


A   CLOSE   INSPECTION. 


IS   IT   ST.   GENEVIEVE? 


263 


could  travel  from  the  mouths  of  the  Mississippi  to  Quebec 
and  be  on  French  territory  and  under  French  rule  all  the 
way. 

Presently  I  ascended  to  the   hurricane  deck  and  cast  a 
longing  glance  toward  the  pilot-house. 


CHAPTER   XXIV. 


MY   INCOGNITO   IS    EXPLODED. 


AFTER  a  close  study  of  the  face  of  the  pilot  on  watch,  I 
was  satisfied  that  I  had  never  seen  him  before  ;  so 
I  went  up  there.  The  pilot  inspected  me  ;  I  re-inspected  the 
pilot.  These  customary  preliminaries  over,  I  sat  down  on  the 
high  bench,  and  he  faced  about  and  went  on  with  his  work. 
Every  detail  of  the  pilot-house  was  familiar  to  me,  with  one 
exception,  —  a  large-mouthed  tube  under  the  breast-board. 
I  puzzled  over  that  thing  a  considerable  time  ;  then  gave  up 
and  asked  what  it  was  for. 

"  To  hear  the  engine-bells  through." 

It  was  another  good  contrivance  which  ought  to  have  been 
invented  half  a  century  sooner.  So  I  was  thinking,  when  the 
pilot  asked,  — 

"  Do  you  know  what  this  rope  is  for  ?  " 

I  managed  to  get  around  this  question,  without  committing 
myself. 

"  Is  this  the  first  time  you  were  ever  in  a  pilot-house  ? " 

I  crept  under  that  one. 

"  Where  are  you  from  ?  " 

."  New  England." 

"  First  time  you  have  ever  been  West  ?  " 

I  climbed  over  this  one. 

"  If  you  take  an  interest  in  such  things,  I  can  tell  you 
what  all  these  things  are  for." 

I  said  I  should  like  it. 

"  This,"  putting  his  hand  on  a  backing-bell  rope,  "  is  to 
sound  the  fire-alarm ;  this,"  putting  his  hand  on  a  go-a-head 


LEARNING  THE   ROPES. 


265 


bell,  "  is  to  call  the  texas-tender ;  this  one,"  indicating  the 
whistle-lever,  "  is  to  call  the  captain  "  —  and  so  he  went  on, 
touching  one  object  after  another,  and  reeling  off  his  tranquil 
spool  of  lies. 

I  had  never  felt  so  like  a  passenger   before.     I  thanked 
him,  with  emotion,  for  each  new  fact,  and  wrote  it  down  in 


SHOWING  THE   BELLS 


my  note-book.  The  pilot  warmed  to  his  opportunity,  and 
proceeded  to  load  me  up  in  the  good  old-fashioned  way.  At 
times  I  was  afraid  he  was  going  to  rupture  his  invention ; 
but  it  always  stood  the  strain,  and  he  pulled  through  all 
right.  He  drifted,  by  easy  stages,  into  revealments  of  the 
river's  marvellous  eccentricities  of  one  sort  and  another,  and 


266 


THE   ALLIGATOR   BUSINESS. 


backed  them  up  with  some  pretty  gigantic  illustrations.    For 
instance, — 

"  Do  you  see  that  little  bowlder  sticking  out  of  the  water 
yonder  ?  well,  when  I  first  came  on  the  river,  that  was  a 
solid  ridge  of  rock,  over  sixty  feet  high  and  two  miles  long. 
All  washed  away  but  that."     [This  with  a  sigh.] 

I  had  a  mighty  impulse  to  destroy  him,  but  it  seemed  to 
me  that  killing,  in  any  ordinary  way,  would  be  too  good  for 
him. 

Once,  when  an  odd-looking  craft,  with  a  vast  coal-scuttle 
slanting  aloft  on  the  end  of  a  beam,  was  steaming  by  in  the 

distance,  he  indif- 
ferently drew  atten- 
tion to  it,  as  oire 
might  to  an  object 
grown  wearisome 
through  familiarity, 
and  observed  that 
it  was  an  "  alligator 
boat." 

"An  alligator 
boat?  What's  it 
for?" 

"  To  dredge  out 
alligators  with." 

"  Are  they  so 
thick  as  to  be 
troublesome  ?  " 
"  Well,  not  now,  because  the  government  keeps  them 
down.  But  they  used  to  be.  Not  everywhere ;  but  in 
favorite  places,  here  and  there,  where  the  river  is  wide  and 
shoal  —  like  Plum  Point,  and  Stack  Island,  and  so  on  — 
places  they  call  alligator  beds." 

"  Did  they  actually  impede  navigation  ?  " 
"  Years  ago,  yes,  in  very  low  water ;  there  was  hardly  a 
trip,  then,  that  we  did  n't  get  aground  on  alligators." 


'AN    ALLIGATOR   BOAT. 


ALLIGATOR   PILOTS.  267 

It  seemed  to  me  that  I  should  certainly  have  to  get  out 
my  tomahawk.     However,  I  restrained  myself  and  said,  — 

"  It  must  have  been  dreadful." 

"  Yes,  it  was  one  of  the  main  difficulties  about  piloting. 
It  was  so  hard  to  tell  anything  about  the  water ;  the  damned 
things  shift  around  so  —  never  lie  still  five  minutes  at  a  time. 
You  can  tell  a  wind-reef,  straight  off,  by  the  look  of  it ;  you 
can  tell  a  break ;  you  can  tell  a  sand-reef  —  that 's  all  easy  ; 
but  an  alligator  reef  does  n't  show  up,  worth  anything.  Nine 
times  in  ten  you  can't  tell  where  the  water  is ;  and  when  you 


ALLIGATOR   PILOTS. 


do  see  where  it  is,  like  as  not  it  ain't  there  when  you  get 
there,  the  devils  have  swapped  around  so,  meantime.  Of 
course  there  were  some  few  pilots  that  could  judge  of  alli- 
gator water  nearly  as  well  as  they  could  of  any  other  kind, 
but  they  had  to  have  natural  talent  for  it ;  it  was  n't  a  thing 
a  body  could  learn,  you  had  to  be  born  with  it.  Let  me  see : 
there  was  Ben  Thornburg,  and  Beck  Jolly,  and  Squire  Bell, 
and  Horace  Bixby,  and  Major  Downing,  and  John  Stevenson, 
and  Billy  Gordon,  and  Jim  Brady,  and  George  Ealer,  and 
Billy  Youngblood  —  all  A 1  alligator  pilots.  They  could  tell 
alligator  water  as  far  as  another  Christian  could  tell  whiskey. 
Read  it  ? —  Ah,  couldn't  they,  though  !  I  only  wish  I  had  as 
many  dollars  as  they  could  read  alligator  water  a  mile  and  a 


268  CONVINCING   ARGUMENTS. 

half  off.  Yes,  and  it  paid  them  to  do  it,  too.  A  good 
alligator  pilot  could  always  get  fifteen  hundred  dollars  a 
month.  Nights,  other  people  had  to  lay  up  for  alligators,  but 
those  fellows  never  laid  up  for  alligators ;  they  never  laid  up 
for  anything  but  fog.  They  could  smell  the  best  alligator 
water  —  so  it  was  said  ;  I  don't  know  whether  it  was  so  or 
not,  and  I  think  a  body  's  got  his  hands  full  enough  if  he 
sticks  to  just  what  he  knows  himself,  without  going  around 
backing  up  other  people's  say-so's,  though  there  's  a  plenty 
that  ain't  backward  about  doing  it,  as  long  as  they  can  roust 
out  something  wonderful  to  tell.  Which  is  not  the  style  of 
Robert  Styles,  by  as  much  as  three  fathom  —  maybe  quarter- 
ns." 

[My !  Was  this  Rob  Styles '( —  This  moustached  and 
stately  figure?  —  A  slim  enough  cub,  in  my  time.  How  he 
has  improved  in  comeliness  in  five  and  twenty  years  —  and 
in  the  noble  art  of  inflating  his  facts.]  After  these  musings, 
1  said  aloud, — 

"  I  should  think  that  dredging  out  the  alligators  would  n't 
have  done  much  good,  because  they  could  come  back  again 
right  away." 

"  If  you  had  had  as  much  experience  of  alligators  as  I 
have,  you  would  n't  talk  like  that.  You  dredge  an  alligator 
once  and  he 's  convinced.  It 's  the  last  you  hear  of  him. 
He  would  n't  come  back  for  pie.  If  there 's  one  thing  that 
an  alligator  is  more  down  on  than  another,  it's  being 
dredged.  Besides,  they  were  not  simply  shoved  out  of  the 
way  ;  the  most  of  the  scoopful  were  scooped  aboard ;  they 
emptied  them  into  the  hold  ;  and  when  they  had  got  a  trip, 
they  took  them  to  Orleans  to  the  Government  works." 

"  What  for  ?  " 

"  Why,  to  make  soldier-shoes  out  of  their  hides.  All  the 
Government  shoes  arc  made  of  alligator  hide.  It  makes  the 
best  shoes  in  the  world.  They  last  five  years,  and  they  won't 
absorb  water.  The  alligator  fishery  is  a  Government 
monopoly.     All  the  alligators  are  Government  property  — 


THE   SACRED   BIRD. 


269 


just  like  the  live-oaks.     You  cut  down  a  live-oak,  and  Govern- 
ment fines  you  fifty  dollars  ;  you  kill  an  alligator,  and  up  you 
go  for  misprision  of  treason  —  lucky  duck  if  they  don't  hang 
you,  too.      And  they  will,  if  you 're 
a  Democrat.       The  buzzard  is  the 
sacred  bird  of  the  South,  and  you 
can't  touch  him ;    the  alligator   is 
the  sacred  bird  of  the  Government, 
and  you  've  got  to  let  him  alone." 

"  Do  you  ever  get  aground  on  the 
alligators  now  ?  " 

"Oh,  no !  it  has  n't  happened 
for  years." 

"  Well,  then,  why  do  they  still 
keep  the  alligator  boats  in  ser- 
vice ?  " 

"Just  for  police  duty — nothing 
more.  They  merely  go  up  and 
down  now  and  then.  The  present 
generation  of  alligators  know  them 
as  easy  as  a  burglar  knows  a  rounds- 
man ;  when  they  see  one  coming, 
they  break  camp  and  go  for  the 
woods." 

After  rounding-out  and  finishing- 
up  and  polishing-off  the  alligator 
business,  he  dropped  easily  and 
comfortably  into  the  historical  vein, 
and  told  of  some  tremendous  feats 

of  half  a  dozen  old-time  steamboats  of  his  acquaintance,  dwell- 
ing at  special  length  upon  a  certain  extraordinary  perform- 
ance of  his  chief  favorite  among  this  distinguished  fleet  — 
and  then  adding:  — 

"  That  boat  was  the  '  Cyclone,'  —  last  trip  she  ever  made  - — 
she  sunk,  that  very  trip  —  captain  was  Tom  Ballou,  the  most 
immortal  liar  that  ever  I  struck.    He  could  n't  ever  seem  to 


THE    SACRED   BIKD. 


270 


A   CHAMPION   LIAR. 


tell  the  truth,  in  any  kind  of  weather.  Why,  he  would  make 
you  fairly  shudder.  He  was  the  most  scandalous  liar!  I 
left  him,  finally  ;  I  could  n't  stand  it.  The  proverb  says, 
'  like  master,  like  man  ; '  and  if  you  stay  with  that  kind  of  a 
man,  you'll  come  under  suspicion  by  and  by,  just  as  sure 
as  you  live,.    He  paid  first-class  wages ;  but  said  I,  What 's 


COUNTING   THE   VOTE. 


wages  when  your  reputation 's  in  danger  ?  So  I  let  the 
wages  go,  and  froze  to  my  reputation.  And  I  've  never 
regretted  it.  Reputation 's  worth  everything,  ain't  it  ?  That 's 
the  way  I  look  at  it.  He  had  more  selfish  organs  than  any 
seven  men  in  the  world  —  all  packed  in  the  stern-sheets  of 
his  skull,  of  course,  where  they  belonged.  They  weighed 
down  the  back  of  his  head  so  that  it  made  his  nose  tilt  up 
in  the  air.     People  thought  it  was  vanity,  but  it  wasn't,  it 


A  RATTLER   TO   GO.  '       271 

was  malice.  If  you  only  saw  his  foot,  you  'd  take  him  to  be 
nineteen  feet  high, Jbut  he  was  n't ;  it  was  because  his  foot 
was  out  of  drawing.  He  was  intended  to  be  nineteen  feet 
high,  no  doubt,  if  his  foot  was  made  first,  but  he  did  n't  get 
there  ;  he  was  only  five  feet  ten.  That 's  what  he  was,  and 
that's  what  he  is.  You  take  the  lies  out  of  him,  and  he'll 
shrink  to  the  size  of  your  hat ;  you  take  the  malice  out  of 
him,  and  he  '11  disappear.  That '  Cyclone '  was  a  rattler  to  go, 
and  the  sweetest  thing  to  steer  that  ever  walked  the  waters. 
Set  her  amidships,  in  a  big  river,  and  just  let  her  go ;  it  was 
all  you  had  to  do.  She  would  hold  herself  on  a  star  all 
night,  if  you  let  her  alone.  You  could  n't  ever  feel  her  rud- 
der. It  was  n't  any  more  labor  to  steer  her  than  it  is  to 
count  the  Republican  vote  in  a  South  Carolina  election.  One 
morning,  just  at  daybreak,  the  last  trip  she  ever  made,  they 
took  her  rudder  aboard  to  mend  it ;  I  did  n't  know  anything 
about  it ;  I  backed  her  out  from  the  wood-yard  and  went 
a-weaving  down  the  river  all  serene.  When  I  had  gone 
about  twenty-three  miles,  and  made  four  horribly  crooked 
crossings  —  " 

"  Without  any  rudder  ?  " 

"  Yes  —  old  Capt.  Tom  appeared  on  the  roof  and  began  to 
find  fault  with  me  for  running  such  a  dark  night  —  " 

"  Such  a  dark  night?  —  Why,  you  said  —  " 

"Never  mind  what  I  said,  —  'twas  as  dark  as  Egypt  now, 
though  pretty  soon  the  moon  began  to  rise,  and  —  " 

"  You  mean  the  sun  —  because  you  started  out  just  at 
break  of  —  look  here  !  Was  this  before  you  quitted  the  cap- 
tain on  account  of  his  lying,  or  —  " 

"  It  was  before  —  oh,  a  long  time  before.  And  as  I  was 
saying,  he  —  " 

"  But  was  this  the  trip  she  sunk,  or  was — " 

"  Oh,  no !  —  months  afterward.    And  so  the  old  man,  he — " 

"  Then  she  made  two  last  trips,  because  you  said  —  " 

He  stepped  back  from  the  wheel,  swabbing  away  his  per- 
spiration, and  said  — 


272 


SCOOPED! 


"Here!"  (calling  me  by  name),  " you  take  her  and  lie  a 
while  —  you're  handier  at  it  than  1  am.  Trying  to  play 
yourself  for  a  stranger  and  an  innocent !  —  why,  I  knew  you 
before  you  had  spoken  seven  words ;  and  I  made  up  my 
mind  to  find  out  what  was  your  little  game.     It  was  to  draw 


HERE,    YOU   TAKE   HER 


me  out.     Well,  1  let  you,  did  n't  I  ? 

Now  take  the  wheel  and  finish  the  watch ;  and  next  time 

play  fair,  and  you  won't  have  to  work  your  passage." 

Thus  ended  the  fictitious-name  business.  And  not  six 
hours  out  from  St.  Louis !  but  I  had  gained  a  privilege,  any- 
way, for  I  had  been  itching  to  get  my  hands  on  the  wheel, 
from  the  beginning.  I  seemed  to  have  forgotten  the  river, 
but  I  had  n't  forgotten  how  to  steer  a  steamboat,  nor  how  to 
enjoy  it,  either. 


CHAPTER   XXV. 


FROM   CAIRO   TO   HICKMAN. 


THE  scenery,  from  St.  Louis  to  Cairo  —  two  hundred 
miles  — is  varied  and  beautiful.    The  hills  were  clothed 
in  the  fresh  foliage  of  spring  now,  and  were  a  gracious  and 


worthy  setting  for  the 
broad  river  flowing  be- 
tween.   Our  trip  began  aus- 
piciously,  with    a    perfect 
day,  as  to  breeze  and  sun- 
shine, and  our  boat  threw 
the  miles  out  behind   her 
with  satisfactory  despatch. 
We  found  a  railway  intruding  at  Chester,  Illinois ;  Ches-: 
ter  has  also  a  penitentiary  now,  and  is  otherwise  marching 

18 


GRAND    TOWER. 


274  GRAND   TOWER. 

on.  At  Grand  Tower,  too,  there  was  a  railway  ;  and  another 
at  Cape  Girardeau.  The  former  town  gets  its  name  from  a 
huge,  squat  pillar  of  rock,  which  stands  up  out  of  the  water 
on  the  Missouri  side  of  the  river  —  a  piece  of  nature's  fanci- 
ful handiwork  —  and  is  one  of  the  most  picturesque  features 
of  the  scenery  of  that  region.  For  nearer  or  remoter  neigh- 
bors, the  Tower  has  the  Devil's  Bake  Oven  —  so  called, 
perhaps,  because  it  does  not  powerfully  resemble  anybody 
else's  bake  oven;  and  the  Devil's  Tea  Table  —  this  latter  a 
great  smooth-surfaced  mass  of  rock,  with  diminishing  wine- 
glass stem,  perched  some  fifty  or  sixty  feet  above  the  river, 
beside  a  beflowered  and  garlanded  precipice,  and  sufficiently 
like  a  tea-table  to  answer  for  anybody,  Devil  or  Christian. 
Away  down  the  river  we  have  the  Devil's  Elbow  and  the 
Devil's  Hace-course,  and  lots  of  other  property  of  his  which 
I  cannot  now  call  to  mind. 

The  Town  of  Grand  Tower  was  evidently  a  busier  place 
than  it  had  been  in  old  times,  but  it  seemed  to  need  some 
repairs  here  and  there,  and  a  new  coat  of  whitewash  all 
over.  Still,  it  was  pleasant  to  me  to  see  the  old  coat  once 
more.  "  Uncle  "  Mumford,  our  second  officer,  said  the  place 
had  been  suffering  from  high  water  and  consequently  was 
not  looking  its  best  now.  But  he  said  it  was  not  strange 
that  it  did  n't  waste  whitewash  on  itself,  for  more  lime  was 
made  there,  and  of  a  better  quality,  than  anywhere  in  the 
West ;  and  added,  —  "On  a  dairy  farm  you  never  can  get  any 
milk  for  your  coffee,  nor  any  sugar  for  it  on  a  sugar  planta- 
tion ;  and  it  is  against  sense  to  go  to  a  lime  town  to  hunt  for 
whitewash."  In  my  own  experience  I  knew  the  first  two 
items  to  be  true ;  and  also  that  people  who  sell  candy  don't 
care  for  candy ;  therefore  there  was  plausibility  in  Uncle 
Mumford's  final  observation  that  "  people  who  make  lime 
run  more  to  religion  than  whitewash."  Uncle  Mumford 
said,  further,  that  Grand  Tower  was  a  great  coaling  centre 
and  a  prospering  place. 

Cape   Girardeau  is  situated  on  a  hillside,  and  makes  a 


RELIGIOUS   PARTIALITIES. 


275 


handsome  appearance.  There  is  a  great  Jesuit  school  for 
boys  at  the  foot  of  the  town  by  the  river.  Uncle  Mumford 
said  it  had  as  high  a  reputation  for  thoroughness  as  any 
similar  institution  in  Missouri.     There  was  another  college 

higher  up  on  an  airy  sum- 
mit,—  a  bright  new  edifice, 
picturesquely  and  peculiarly 
towered  and  pinnacled  —  a 
sort  of  gigantic  casters,  with 
the     cruets     all     complete. 
Uncle   Mumford   said   that 
Cape     Girardeau    was    the 
Athens    of    Missouri,    and 
contained    several    colleges 
besides  those  already  men- 
tioned ;  and  all  of  them  on 
a  religious  basis  of  one  kind 
or  another.    He  directed  my 
attention  to  what  he  called 
the  "  strong  and  pervasive 
religious  look  of  the  town," 
but  I  could  not  see  that  it 
looked  more  religious  than  the 
other  hill  towns  with  the  same 
.^         slope  and  built  of  the  same  kind  of 
bricks.     Partialities  often   make  peo- 
ple see  more  than  really  exists. 

Uncle  Mumford  has  been  thirty  years 
a  mate  on  the  river.  He  is  a  man  of 
practical  sense  and  a  level  head ;  has  observed ;  has  had 
much  experience  of  one  sort  and  another ;  has  opinions ; 
has,  also,  just  a  perceptible  dash  of  poetry  in  his  compo- 
sition, an  easy  gift  of  speech,  a  thick  growl  in  his  voice, 
and  an  oath  or  two  where  he  can  get  at  them  when  the 
exigencies  of  his  office  require  a  spiritual  lift.  He  is  a 
mate  of  the  blessed  old-time  kind ;  and  goes  gravely  damn- 


A   DAIRY   FARM. 


276  UNIFORMS   AND   BRASS   BUTTONS. 

ing  around,  when  there  is  work  to  the  fore,  in  a  way  to  mel- 
low the  ex-steamboatman's  heart  with  sweet  soft  longings 
for  the  vanished  days  that  shall  come  no  more.     "  Git  up, 

there, you  !     Going  to  be  all  day  '(.  Why  d'n't  you  say 

you  was  petrified  in  your  hind  legs,  before  you  shipped ! " 

He  is  a  steady  man  with  his  crew ;  kind  and  just,  but 
firm ;  so  they  like  him,  and  stay  with  him.  He  is  still  in 
the  slouchy  garb  of  the  old  generation  of  mates  ;  but  next 
trip  the  Anchor  Line  will  have  him  in  uniform — a  natty 
blue  naval  uniform,  with  brass  buttons,  along  with  all  the 
officers  of  the  line  —  and  then  he  will  be  a  totally  different 
style  of  scenery  from  what  he  is  now. 

Uniforms  on  the  Mississippi !  It  beats  all  the  other  changes 
put  together,  for  surprise.  Still,  there  is  another  surprise  — 
that  it  was  not  made  fifty  years  ago.  It  is  so  manifestly 
sensible,  that  it  might  have  been  thought  of  earlier,  one 
would  suppose.  During  fifty  years,  out  there,  the  innocent 
passenger  in  need  of  help  and  information,  has  been  mistaking 
the  mate  for  the  cook,  and  the  captain  for  the  barber  —  and 
being  roughly  entertained  for  it,  too.  But  his  troubles  are 
ended  now.  And  the  greatly  improved  aspect  of  the  boat's 
staff  is  another  advantage  achieved  by  the  dress-reform 
period. 

Steered  down  the  bend  below  Cape  Girardeau.  They  used 
to  call  it  "  Steersman's  Bend ; "  plain  sailing  and  plenty  of 
water  in  it,  always ;  about  the  only  place  in  the  Upper  River 
that  a  new  cub  was  allowed  to  take  a  boat  through,  in  low 
water. 

Thebes,  at  the  head  of  the  Grand  Chain,  and  Commerce  at 
the  foot  of  it,  were  towns  easily  rememberable,  as  they  had 
not  undergone  conspicuous  alteration.  Nor  the  Chain,  either 
—  in  the  nature  of  things;  for  it  is  a  chain  of  sunken  rocks 
admirably  arranged  to  capture  and  kill  steamboats  on  bad 
nights.  A  good  many  steamboat  corpses  lie  buried  there,  out 
of  sight ;  among  the  rest  my  first  friend  the  "  Paul  Jones  ; " 
she  knocked  her  bottom  out,  and  went  down  like  a  pot,  so 


A   GRAY  MARE   AND   A   PREACHER. 


277 


the  historian  told  me  —  Uncle  Mumford.     He  said  she  had 
a  gray  mare  aboard,  and  a  preacher.     To  me,  this  sufficiently 


the  disaster ;  as  it  did, 
Mumford,  who  added, — 
are  many  ignorant 
would  scoff  at  such 
call  it  superstition.  But 
notice 


accounted  for 
of  course,  to 
"  But  there 
people  who 
a  matter,  and 
you  will  always 
that  they  are 
who  have  never 
travelled  with 
a  gray  mare  and 
a  preacher.  I 
went  down 
the  river  once 
in  such  com- 
pany.  We 
grounded  at 
Bloody  Is- 
lan  d ;  we 
grounded 
at  Hang- 
ing Dog; 
we  grounded 
just  below 
this  same 
Commerce; 
we  jolted 
Beaver  Dam 
Rock ;  we  hit 
one  of  the 
worst  breaks 
in  the '  Grave- 
yard '  behind  Goose  Island ;  we  had  a  roustabout  killed  in 
a  fight ;  we  burnt  a  boiler  ;  broke  a  shaft ;  collapsed  a  flue  ; 
and  wen^  into  Cairo  with  nine  feet  of  water  in  the  hold  — 


THREW  THE  PREACHER  OVERBOARD. 


278  A  CALAMITOUS   COMBINATION. 

may  have  been  more,  may  have  been  less.  I  remember  it  as 
if  it  were  yesterday.  The  men  lost  their  heads  with  terror. 
They  painted  the  mare  blue,  in  sight  of  town,  and  threw  the 
preacher  overboard,  or  we  should  not  have  arrived  at  all. 
The  preacher  was  fished  out  and  saved.  He  acknowledged, 
himself,  that  he  had  been  to  blame.  I  remember  it  all,  as 
if  it  were  yesterday.1' 

That  this  combination  —  of  preacher  and  gray  mare  — 
should  breed  calamity,  seems  strange,  and  at  first  glance 
unbelievable  ;  but  the  fact  is  fortified  by  so  much  unassaila- 
ble proof  that  to  doubt  is  to  dishonor  reason.  I  myself 
remember  a  case  where  a  captain  was  warned  by  numerous 
friends  against  taking  a  gray  mare  and  a  preacher  with  him, 
but  persisted  in  his  purpose  in  spite  of  all  that  could  be  said  ; 
and  the  same  day,  —  it  may  have  been  the  next,  and  some 
say  it  was,  though  I  think  it  was  the  same  day,  —  he  got 
drunk  and  fell  down  the  hatchway  and  was  borne  to  his 
home  a  corpse.     This  is  literally  true. 

No  vestige  of  Hat  Island  is  left  now ;  every  shred  of  it 
is  washed  away.  I  do  not  even  remember  what  part  of  the 
river  it  used  to  be  in,  except  that  it  was  between  St.  Louis 
and  Cairo  somewhere.  It  was  a  bad  region  —  all  around 
and  about  Hat  Island,  in  early  days.  A  farmer  who  lived 
on  the  Illinois  shore  there,  said  that  twenty-nine  steamboats 
had  left  their  bones  strung  along  within  sight  from  his 
house.  Between  St.  Louis  and  Cairo  the  steamboat  wrecks 
average  one  to  the  mile  ;  —  two  hundred  wrecks,  altogether. 

I  could  recognize  big  changes  from  Commerce  down. 
Beaver  Dam  Rock  was  out  in  the  middle  of  the  river  now, 
and  throwing  a  prodigious  "  break ;"  it  used  to  be  close  to  the 
shore,  and  boats  went  down  outside  of  it.  A  big  island  that 
used  to  be  away  out  in  mid-river,  has  retired  to  the  Missouri 
shore,  and  boats  do  not  go  near  it  any  more.  The  island 
called  Jacket  Pattern  is  whittled  down  to  a  wedge  now, 
and  is  booked  for  early  destruction.  Goose  Island  is  all 
gone  but  a  little  dab  the  size  of  a  steamboat.     The  perilous 


GONE   TO  ILLINOIS. 


279 


"  Graveyard,"  among  whose  numberless  wrecks  we  used  to 
pick  our  way  so  slowly  and  gingerly,  is  far  away  from  the 
channel  now,  and  a  ter- 
ror to  nobody.  One  of  t  J 
the  i  slands  formerly 
called  the  Two  Sisters 
is  gone  entirely ;  the 
other,  which  used  to 
lie  close  to  the  Illinois 
shore,  is  now  on  the 
Missouri  side,  a  mile 
away  ;  it  is  joined  sol- 
idly to  the  shore,  and 
it  takes  a  sharp  eye  to 
see  where  the  seam  is  — 
but  it  is  Illinois  ground 
yet,  and  the  people  who 
live  on  it  have  to  ferry 
themselves  over  and 
work  the  Illinois  roads 
and  pay  Illinois  taxes  : 
singular  state  of  things  ! 
Near  the  mouth  of 
the  river  several  islands 
were  missing  —  washed 
away.  Cairo  was  still 
there  —  easily  visible 
across  the  long,  flat 
point  upon  whose  further 
verge  it  stands  ;  but  we  had  to  steam  a  long  way  around  to 
get  to  it.  Night  fell  as  we  were  going  out  of  the  "  Upper 
River  "  and  meeting  the  floods  of  the  Ohio.  We  dashed 
along  without  anxiety  ;  for  the  hidden  rock  which  used  to 
lie  right  in  the  way  has  moved  up  stream  a  long  distance 
out  of  the  channel;  or  rather,  about  one  county  has  gone 
into  the  river  from  the  Missouri  point,  and  the  Cairo  point 


"ILLINOIS    GROUND." 


280  AN  EQUITABLE   RIVER. 

has  "  made  down  "  and  added  to  its  long  tongue  of  territory 
correspondingly.  The  Mississippi  is  a  just  and  equitable 
river  ;  it  never  tumbles  one  man's  farm  overboard  without 
building  a  new  farm  just  like  it  for  that  man's  neighbor. 
This  keeps  down  hard  feelings. 

Going  into  Cairo,  we  came  near  killing  a  steamboat  which 
paid  no  attention  to  our  whistle  and  then  tried  to  cross  our 
bows.  By  doing  some  strong  backing,  we  saved  him ;  which 
was  a  great  loss,  for  he  would   have   made  good  literature. 

Cairo  is  a  brisk  town  now ;  and  is  substantially  built,  and 
has  a  city  look  about  it  which  is  in  noticeable  contrast  to  its 
former  estate,  as  per  Mr.  Dickens's  portrait  of  it.  However, 
it  was  already  building  with  bricks  when  I  had  seen  it  last 
—  which  was  when  Colonel  (now  General)  Grant  was  drill- 
ing his  first  command  there.  Uncle  Mumford  says  the  libra- 
ries and  Sunday-schools  have  done  a  good  work  in  Cairo,  as 
well  as  the  brick  masons.  Cairo  has  a  heavy  railroad  and 
river  trade,  and  her  situation  at  the  junction  of  the  two 
great  rivers  is  so  advantageous  that  she  cannot  well  help 
prospering. 

When  I  turned  out,  in  the  morning,  we  had  passed  Colum- 
bus, Kentucky,  and  were  approaching  Hickman,  a  pretty 
town,  perched  on  a  handsome  hill.  Hickman  is  in  a  rich 
tobacco  region,  and  formerly  enjoyed  a  great  and  lucrative 
trade  in  that  staple,  collecting  it  there  in  her  warehouses 
from  a  large  area  of  country  and  shipping  it  by  boat ;  but 
Uncle  Mumford  says  she  built  a  railway  to  facilitate  this 
commerce  a  little  morej  and  he  thinks  it  facilitated  it  the 
wrong  way  —  took  the  bulk  of  the  trade  out  of  her  hands  by 
"  collaring  it  along  the  line  without  gathering  it  at  her 
doors." 


CHAPTER  XXVI. 

UNDER  FIRE. 

TALK  began  to  run  upon  the  war  now,  for  we  were  get- 
ting down  into  the  upper  edge  of  the  former  battle- 
stretch  by  this  time. 
Columbus  was  just 
behind  us,  so  there 
was  a  good  deal  said 
about  the  famous 
battle  of  Belmont. 
S ev e r a 1  of  the 
boat's  officers  had 
seen  active  service 
in  the  Mississippi 
war-fleet.  I  gath- 
ered  that  they 
found  themselves 
sadly  out  of  their 
element  in  that 
kind  of  business  at 
first,  but  afterward 
got  accustomed  to 
it,  reconciled  to  it, 
and  more  or  less  at 
home  in  it.  One 
of  our  pilots  had  his 
first  war  experience 
in  the  Belmont  fight, 
as  a  pilot  on  a  boat 
in  the  Confederate  service 


HIS  MAIDEN    BATTLE. 


I  had  often  had  a  curiosity  to 


282 


WAR   HISTORY. 


know  how  a  green  hand  might  feel,  in  his  maiden  battle, 
perched  all  solitary  and  alone  on  high  in  a  pilot  house,  a  tar- 
get for  Tom,  Dick  and  Harry,  and  nobody  at  his  elbow  to 

shame  him  from  showing 
the  white  feather  when 
matters  grew  hot  and  peril- 
ous around  him  ;  so,  to  me 
liis  story  was  valuable  —  it 
filled  a  gap  for  me  which  all 
histories  had  left  till  that 
time  empty. 


THE   PILOT'S   FIRST 
BATTLE. 

He  said :  — 

It  was  the  7th  of  Novem- 
ber. The  fight  began  at 
seven  in  the  morning.  I 
was  on  the  "  R.  H.  W. 
Hill."  Took  over  a  load 
of  troops  from  Columbus. 
Came  back,  and  took  over 
a  battery  of  artillery.  My 
partner  said  he  was  going 
to  see  the  fight ;  wanted 
me  to  go  along.  I  said, 
no,  I  was  n't  anxious,  I 
would  look  at  it  from  the 
pilot-house.  He  said  I  was 
a  coward,  and  left. 

That  fight  was  an  awful 
sight.  General  Cheatham  made  his  men  strip  their  coats 
off  and  throw  them  in  a  pile,  and  said,  "  Now  follow  me  to 
hell  or  victory  ! "  I  heard  him  sa}  that  from  the  pilot-house ; 
and  then  he  galloped  in,  at  the  head  of  his  troops.     Old 


MIGHTY  WARM   TIMES. 


HIS   FIRST  BATTLE.  283 

General  Pillow,  with  his  white  hair,  mounted  on  a  white 
horse,  sailed  in,  too,  leading  his  troops  as  lively  as  a  boy. 
By  and  by  the  Federals  chased  the  rebels  back,  and  here 
they  came  !  tearing  along,  everybody  for  himself  and  Devil 
take  the  hindmost !  and  down  under  the  bank  they  scram- 
bled, and  took  shelter.  I  was  sitting  with  my  legs  hang- 
ing out  of  the  pilot-house  window.  All  at  once  I  noticed 
a  whizzing  sound  passing  my  ear.  Judged  it  was  a  bullet. 
I  didn't  stop  to  think  about  anything,  I  just  tilted  over 
backwards  and  landed  on  the  floor,  and  staid  there.  The 
balls  came  booming  around.  Three  cannon-balls  went 
through  the  chimney  ;  one  ball  took  off  the  corner  of  the 
pilot-house  ;  shells  were  screaming  and  bursting  all  around. 
Mighty  warm  times  —  I  wished  I  had  n't  come.  I  lay  there 
on  the  pilot-house  floor,  while  the  shots  came  faster  and 
faster.  I  crept  in  behind  the  big  stove,  in  the  middle  of 
the  pilot-house.  Presently  a  minie-ball  came  through  the 
stove,  and  just  grazed  my  head,  and  cut  my  hat.  I 
judged  it  was  time  to  go  away  from  there.  The  captain 
was  on  the  roof  with  a  red-headed  major  from  Memphis  — 
a  fine-looking  man.  I  heard  him  say  he  wanted  to  leave 
here,  but  "  that  pilot  is  killed."  I  crept  over  to  the  star- 
board side  to  pull  the  bell  to  set  her  back ;  raised  up  and 
took  a  look,  and  I  saw  about  fifteen  shot  holes  through  the 
window  panes  ;  had  come  so  lively  I  had  n't  noticed  them. 
I  glanced  out  on  the  water,  and  the  spattering  shot  were 
like  a  hail-storm.  I  thought  best  to  get  out  of  that  place. 
I  went  down  the  pilot-house  guy,  head  first  —  not  feet  first 
but  head  first  —  slid  down  —  before  I  struck  the  deck,  the 
captain  said  we  must  leave  there.  So  I  climbed  up  the  guy 
and  got  on  the  floor  again.  About  that  time,  they  collared 
my  partner  and  were  bringing  him  up  to  the  pilot-house 
between  two  soldiers.  Somebody  had  said  I  was  killed. 
He  put  his  head  in  and  saw  me  on  the  floor  reaching  for  the 
backing  bells.  He  said,  "  Oh,  hell,  he  ain't  shot,"  and  jerked 
away  from  the  men  who   had   him   by  the  collar,  and  ran 


284 


SEEING   A  FIGHT. 


below.     We  were  there  until  three  o'clock  in  the  afternoon, 
and  then  got  away  all  right. 

The  next  time  I  saw  my  partner,  I  said, "  Now,  come  out,  be 

honest,  and  tell  me  the  truth.     Where  did  you  go  when  you 

went  to  see  that  battle  ?"   He  says, "  I  went  down  in  the  hold." 

All  through  that  fight  I  was  scared  nearly  to  death.     I 

hardly  knew  anything,  I  was  so  frightened ;   but   you  see, 

nobody  knew  that 
but  me.     Next  day 
General   Polk    sent 
for  me,  and  praised 
me  for  my  bravery 
and  gallant  conduct. 
I  never  said  any- 
thing, I  let  it  go 
at  that.    I  judged 
it  was  n't  so,  but 
it  was  not  for  me 
to  contradict  a 
general  officer. 

Pretty  soon  af- 
ter that  I  was 
sick,  and  used  up, 
and  had  to  go 
off  to  the  Hot 
Springs.  When 
there,  I  got  a 
good  many  letters 
from  comman- 
ders saying  they  wanted  me  to  come  back.  I  declined, 
because  I  was  n't  well  enough  or  strong  enough ;  but  I 
kept  still,  and  kept  the  reputation  I  had  made. 


"where  did  you  see  that  eight? 


A  plain  story,  straightforwardly  told ;  but  Mumford  told 
me  that  that  pilot  had  "  gilded  that  scare  of  his,  in  spots ; " 
that  his  subsequent  career  in  the  war  was  proof  of  it. 


SOUTHERN  FEUDS. 


285 


We  struck  down  through  the  chute  of  Island  No.  8,  and  I 
went  below  and  fell  into  conversation  with  a  passenger,  a  hand- 
some man,  with  easy  carriage  and  an  intelligent  face.     We 

were  approach- 
ing Island  No. 
10,  a  place  so 
celebrated  dur- 
ing the  war. 


DARNELL   VS.   WATSON. 


This  gentleman's  home  was  on  the  main  shore  in  its  neigh- 
borhood. I  had  some  talk  with  him  about  the  war  times ; 
but  presently  the  discourse  fell  upon  "feuds,"  for  in  no  part 
of  the  South  has  the  vendetta  flourished  more  briskly,  or  held 


286  DAKNELL  AND  WATSON. 

out  longer  between  warring  families,  than  in  this  particular 
region.     This  gentleman  said  :  — 

"  There  's  been  more  than  one  feud  around  here,  in  old 
times,  but  I  reckon  the  worst  one  was  between  the  Darnells 
and  the  Watsons.  Nobody  don't  know  now  what  the  first 
quarrel  was  about,  it 's  so  long  ago ;  the  Darnells  and  the 
Watsons  don't  know,  if  there  's  any  of  them  living,  which  I 
don't  think  there  is.  Some  says  it  was  about  a  horse  or  a 
cow — anyway,  it  was  a  little  matter;  the  money  in  it  was  n't 
of  no  consequence  —  none  in  the  world  —  both  families  was 
rich.  The  thing  could  have  been  fixed  up,  easy  enough ; 
but  no,  that  would  n't  do.  Rough  words  had  been  passed  ; 
and  so,  nothing  but  blood  could  fix  it  up  after  that.  That 
horse  or  cow,  whichever  it  was,  cost  sixty  years  of  killing 
and  crippling!  Every  year  or  so  somebody  was  shot,  on 
one  side  or  the  other  ;  and  as  fast  as  one  generation  was 
laid  out,  their  sons  took  up  the  feud  and  kept  it  a-going. 
And  it 's  just  as  I  say ;  they  went  on  shooting  each  other, 
year  in  and  year  out  —  making  a  kind  of  a  religion  of  it, 
you  see  —  till  they'd  done  forgot,  long  ago,  what  it  was  all 
about.  Wherever  a  Darnell  caught  a  Watson,  or  a  Watson 
caught  a  Darnell,  one  of  'em  was  going  to  get  hurt  —  only 
question  was,  which  of  them  got  the  drop  on  the  other. 
They  'd  shoot  one  another  down,  right  in  the  presence  of 
the  family.  They  did  n't  hunt  for  each  other,  but  when 
they  happened  to  meet,  they  pulled  and  begun.  Men  would 
shoot  boys,  boys  would  shoot  men.  A  man  shot  a  boy  twelve 
years  old  —  happened  on  him  in  the  woods,  and  did  n  t  give 
him  no  chance.  If  he  had  'a'  given  him  a  chance,  the  boy  'd 
V  shot  him.  Both  families  belonged  to  the  same  church 
(everybody  around  here  is  religious)  ;  through  all  this  fifty 
or  sixty  years'  fuss,  both  tribes  was  there  every  Sunday,  to 
worship.  They  lived  each  side  of  the  line,  and  the  church 
was  at  a  landing  called  Compromise.  Half  the  church  and 
half  the  aisle  was  in  Kentucky,  the  other  half  in  Tennessee. 
Sundays  you  'd  see  the  families  drive  up,  all  in  their  Sunday 


PRAYING  AND    SHOOTING. 


287 


clothes,  men,  women,  and  children,  and  file  up  the  aisle,  and 
set  down,  quiet  and  orderly,  one  lot  on  the  Tennessee  side 
of  the  church  and  the  other  on  the  Kentucky  side ;  and  the 
men  and  boys  would  lean  their  guns  up  against  the  wall, 
handy,  and  then  all  hands  would  join  in  with  the  prayer 
and  praise ;  though  they  say  the  man  next  the  aisle  did  n't 
kneel  down,  along  with  the  rest  of  the  family ;  kind  of  stood 

guard.  I  don't 

know;  never 

was   at    that 

church    i  n 

my  life ; 


but  I  remember 
that  that 's  what 
used  to  be  said. 

"  Twenty  or 
twenty-five  years 
igo,  one  of  the 
feud  families 
caught  a  young 
man   of    nineteen 

out  and  killed  him.  Don't  remember  whether  it  was  the 
Darnells  and  Watsons,  or  one  of  the  other  feuds  ;  but 
anyway,  this  young  man  rode  up  —  steamboat  laying  there 
at  the  time  —  and  the  first  thing  he  saw  was  a  whole  gang 
of  the  enemy.  He  jumped  down  behind  a  wood-pile,  but 
they  rode  around   and   begun  on  him,  he  firing  back,  and 


THEY   KEPT   ON   SIIOOTTNG. 


288  THE  LAST  DARNELL. 

they  galloping  and  cavorting  and  yelling  and  banging 
away  with  all  their  might.  Think  he  wounded  a  couple 
of  them ;  but  they  closed  in  on  him  and  chased  him 
into  the  river ;  and  as  lie  swum  along  down  stream, 
they  followed  along  the  bank  and  kept  on  shooting  at 
him ;  and  when  he  struck  shore  he  was  dead.  Windy 
Marshall  told  me  about  it.  He  saw  it.  He  was  captain  of 
the  boat. 

"  Years  ago,  the  Darnells  was  so  thinned  out  that  the  old 
man  and  his  two  sons  concluded  they  'd  leave  the  country. 
They  started  to  take  steamboat  just  above  No.  10 ;  but  the 
Watsons  got  wind  of  it ;  and  they  arrived  just  as  the  two 
young  Darnells  was  walking  up  the  companion-way  with 
their  wives  on  their  arms.  The  fight  begun  then,  and  they 
never  got  no  further  —  both  of  them  killed.  After  that,  old 
Darnell  got  into  trouble  with  the  man  that  run  the  ferry, 
and  the  ferry-man  got  the  worst  of  it — and  died.  But  his 
friends  shot  old  Darnell  through  and  through  —  filled  him 
full  of  bullets,  and  ended  him." 

The  country  gentleman  who  told  me  these  things  had  been 
reared  in  ease  and  comfort,  was  a  man  of  good  parts,  and 
was  college  bred.  His  loose  grammar  was  the  fruit  of  care- 
less habit,  not  ignorance.  This  habit  among  educated  men 
in  the  West  is  not  universal,  but  it  is  prevalent  —  prevalent 
in  the  towns,  certainly,  if  not  in  the  cities  ;  and  to  a  degree 
which  one  cannot  help  noticing,  and  marvelling  at.  I  heard 
a  Westerner  who  would  be  accounted  a  highly  educated  man 
in  any  country,  say  "  never  mind,  it  don't  make  no  difference, 
anyway."  A  life-long  resident  who  was  present  heard  it,  but 
it  made  no  impression  upon  her.  She  was  able  to  recall  the 
fact  afterward,  when  reminded  of  it ;  but  she  confessed  that 
the  words  had  not  grated  upon  her  ear  at  the  time  —  a  con- 
fession which  suggests  that  if  educated  people  can  hear  such 
blasphemous  grammar,  from  such  a  source,  and  be  uncon- 
scious of  the  deed,  the  crime  must  be  tolerably  common  — 
so  common  that  the  general  ear  has  become  dulled  by  famil- 


ISLAND   NUMBER   TEN. 


289 


iarity  with  it,  and  is  no  longer  alert,  no  longer  sensitive  to 
such  affronts. 

No  one  in  the  world  speaks  blemishless  grammar  ;  no  one 
has  ever  written  it  —  wo  one,  either  in  the  world  or  out  of  it 
(taking  the  Scriptures  for  evidence  on  the  latter  point)  ; 
therefore  it  would  not  be  fair  to  exact  grammatical  perfection 
from  the  peoples  of  the  Valley  ;  but  they  and  all  other  peo- 
ples may  justly  be  required  to  refrain  from  knowingly  and 
purposely  debauching  their  grammar. 

I  found  the  river  greatly  changed  at  Island  No.  10.  The 
island  which  I  remembered  was  some  three  miles  long  and  a 


ISLAND   NUMBER   TEN. 

quarter  of  a  mile  wide,  heavily  timbered,  and  lay  near  the 
Kentucky  shore  —  within  two  hundred  yards  of  it,  I  should 
say.  Now,  however,  one  had  to  hunt  for  it  with  a  spy-glass. 
Nothing  was  left  of  it  but  an  insignificant  little  tuft,  and 
this  was  no  longer  near  the  Kentucky  shore ;  it  was  clear 
over  against  the  opposite  shore,  a  mile  away.  In  war  times 
the  island  had  been  an  important  place,  for  it  commanded  the 
situation  ;  and,  being  heavily  fortified,  there  was  no  getting 
by  it.  It  lay  between  the  upper  and  lower  divisions  of  the 
Union  forces,  and  kept  them  separate,  until  a  junction  was 
finally  effected  across  the  Missouri  neck  of  land  ;  but  the 
island  being  itself  joined  to  that  neck  now,  the  wide  river  is 
without  obstruction. 

19 


.290 


RIVER   FLOODS. 


In  this  region  the  river  passes  from  Kentucky  into  Ten- 
nessee, back  into  Missouri,  then  back  into  Kentucky,  and 
thence  into  Tennessee  again.  So  a  mile  or  two  of  Missouri 
sticks  over  into  Tennessee. 

The  town  of  New  Madrid  was  looking  very  unwell ;  but 
otherwise  unchanged  from  its  former  condition  and  aspect. 
Its  blocks  of  frame-houses  were  still  grouped  in  the  same 
old  flat  plain,  and  environed  by  the  same  old  forests.  It  was 
as  tranquil  as  formerly,  and  apparently  had  neither  grown 
nor  diminished  in  size.     It  was  said  that  the  recent  high 


FLOOD   ON   THE   RIVER. 


water  had  invaded  it  and  damaged  its  looks.  This  was  sur- 
prising news  ;  for  in  low  water  the  river  bank  is  very  high 
there  (fifty  feet),  and  in  my  day  an  overflow  had  always 
been  considered  an  impossibility.  This  present  flood  of  1882 
will  doubtless  be  celebrated  in  the  river's  history  for  several 
generations  before  a  deluge  of  like  magnitude  shall  be  seen. 
It  put  all  the  unprotected  low  lands  under  water,  from  Cairo 
to  the  mouth  ;  it  broke  down  the  levees  in  a  great  many 
places,  on  both  sides  of  the  river ;  and  in  some  regions 
south,  when  the  flood  was  at  its  highest,  the  Mississippi  was 


DEVASTATION. 


291 


seventy  miles  wide  !  a  number  of  lives  were  lost,  and  the 
destruction  of  property  was  fearful.  The  crops  were 
destroyed,  houses  washed  away,  and  shelterless  men  and 
cattle  forced  to  take  refuge  on  scattering  elevations  here  and 
there  in  field  and  forest,  and  wait  in  peril  and  suffering  until 
the  boats  put  in  commission  by  the  national  and  local  gov- 
ernments and  by  newspaper  enterprise  could  come  and  res- 
cue them.  The  properties  of  multitudes  of  people  were 
under  water  for  months,  and  the  poorer  ones  must  have 
starved  by  the  hundred  if  succor  had  not  been  promptly 
afforded.1  The  water  had  been  falling  during  a  considerable 
time  now,  yet  as  a  rule  we  found  the  banks  still  under 
water. 

1  For  a  detailed  and  interesting  description  of  the  great  flood,  written  on 
board  of  the  New  Orleans  "Times-Democrat's"  relief-boat,  see  Appendix  A. 


CHAPTER  XXVII. 

SOME   IMPORTED   ARTICLES. 

WE  met  two  steamboats  at  New  Madrid.  Two  steam- 
boats in  sight  at  once !  an  infrequent  spectacle 
now  in  the  lonesome  Mississippi.  The  loneliness  of  this 
solemn,  stupendous  flood  is  impressive  —  and  depressing. 
League  after  league,  and  still  league  after  league,  it  pours  its 
chocolate  tide  along,  between  its  solid  forest  walls,  its  almost 
untenanted  shores,  with  seldom  a  sail  or  a  moving  object  of 
any  kind  to  disturb  the  surface  and  break  the  monotony  of 
the  blank,  watery  solitude  ;  and  so  the  day  goes,  the  night 
comes,  and  again  the  day  —  and  still  the  same,  night  after 
night  and  day  after  day,  —  majestic,  unchanging  sameness  of 
serenity,  repose,  tranquillity,  lethargy,  vacancy, —  symbol  of 
eternity,  realization  of*  the  heaven  pictured  by  priest  and 
prophet,  and  longed  for  by  the  good  and  thoughtless  ! 

Immediately  after  the  war  of  1812,  tourists  began  to  come 
to  America,  from  England ;  scattering  ones  at  first,  then  a 
sort  of  procession  of  them  —  a  procession  which  kept  up  its 
plodding,  patient  march  through  the  land  during  many, 
many  years.  Each  tourist  took  notes,  and  went  home  and 
published  a  book  —  a  book  which  was  usually  calm,  truthful, 
reasonable,  kind ;  but  which  seemed  just  the  reverse  to  our 
tender-footed  progenitors.  A  glance  at  these  tourist-books 
shows  us  that  in  certain  of  its  aspects  the  Mississippi  has 
undergone  no  change  since  those  strangers  visited  it,  but 
remains  to-day  about  as  it  was  then.  The  emotions  produced 
in  those  foreign  breasts  by  these  aspects  were  not  all  formed 


EARLY   TOURISTS.  293 

on  one  pattern,  of  course  ;  they  had  to  be  various,  along  at 
first,  because  the  earlier  tourists  were  obliged  to  originate 
their  emotions,  whereas  in  older  countries  one  can  always 
borrow  emotions  from  one's  predecessors.  And,  mind  you, 
emotions  are  among  the  toughest  things  in  the  world  to 
manufacture  out  of  whole  cloth  ;  it  is  easier  to  manufacture 
seven  facts  than  one  emotion.  Captain  Basil  Hall,  R.  N., 
writing  fifty -live  years  ago,  says :  — 

"  Here  I  caught  the  first  glimpse  of  the  object  I  had  so  long 
wished  to  behold,  and  felt  myself  amply  repaid  at  that  moment  for 
all  the  trouble  I  had  experienced  in  coming  so  far  ;  and  stood  look- 
ing at  the  river  flowing  past  till  it  was  too  dark  to  distinguish  any- 
thing-. But  it  was  not  till  I  had  visited  the 
same   spot  a  dozen  times,  that  I 

came  to  a  right  comprehension  of  ^-      "v* 

the  grandeur  of  the  scene." 


"a  dismal  witness." 

Following  are  Mrs.  Trollope's  emotions.  She  is  writing  a 
few  months  later  in  the  same  year,  1827,  and  is  coming  in 
at  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi  :  — 

"  The  first  indication  of  our  approach  to  land  was  the  appearance 
of  this  mighty  river  pouring  forth  its  muddy  mass  of  waters,  and 
mingling  with  the  deep  blue  of  the  Mexican  Gulf.  I  never  beheld 
a  scene  so  utterly  desolate  as  this  entrance  of  the  Mississippi.  Had 
Dante  seen  it,  he  might  have  drawn  images  of  another  Bolgia  from 


294  ORIGINATED   EMOTIONS. 

its  horrors.  One  only  object  rears  itself  above  the  eddying  waters ; 
this  is  the  mast  of  a  vessel  long  since  wrecked  in  attempting  to  cross 
the  bar,  and  it  still  stands,  a  dismal  witness  of  the  destruction  that 
has  been,  and  a  boding  prophet  of  that  which  is  to  come." 

Emotions  of  Hon.  Charles  Augustus  Murray  (near  St. 
Louis),  seven  years  later  :  — 

"It  is  only  when  you  ascend  the  mighty  current  for  fifty  or  a 
hundred  miles,  and  use  the  eye  of  imagination  as  well  as  that  of 
nature,  that  you  begin  to  understand  all  his  might  and  majesty. 
You  see  him  fertilizing  a  boundless  valley,  bearing  along  in  his 
course  the  trophies  of  his  thousand  victories  over  the  shattered  for- 
est —  here  carrying  away  large  masses  of  soil  with  all  their  growth, 
and  there  forming  islands,  destined  at  some  future  period  to  be  the 
residence  of  man  ;  and  while  indulging  in  this  prospect,  it  is  then 
time  for  reflection  to  suggest  that  the  current  before  you  has  flowed 
through  two  or  three  thousand  miles,  and  has  yet  to  travel  one 
thousand  three  hundred  more  before  reaching  its  ocean  destination." 

Receive,  now,  the  emotions  of  Captain  Marryat,  R.  N. 
author  of  the  sea  tales,  writing  in  1837,  three  years  after  Mr. 
Murray :  — 

"  Never,  perhaps,  in  the  records  of  nations,  was  there  an  instance 
of  a  century  of  such  unvarying  and  unmitigated  crime  as  is  to  be 
collected  from  the  history  of  the  turbulent  and  blood-stained  Missis- 
sippi. The  stream  itself  appears  as  if  appropriate  for  the  deeds 
which  have  been  committed.  It  is  not  like  most  rivers,  beautiful  to 
the  sight,  bestowing  fertility  in  its  course ;  not  one  that  the  eye 
loves  to  dwell  upon  as  it  sweeps  along,  nor  can  you  wander  upon  its 
bank,  or  trust  yourself  without  danger  to  its  stream.  It  is  a  furi- 
ous, rapid,  desolating  torrent,  loaded  with  alluvial  soil  ;  and  few  of 
those  who  are  received  into  its  waters  ever  rise  again,1  or  can  sup- 
port themselves  long  upon  its  surface  without  assistance  from  some 
friendly  log.  It  contains  the  coarsest  and  most  uneatable  of  fish, 
such  as  the  cat-fish  and  such  genus,  and  as  you  descend,  its  banks 

1  There  was  a  foolish  superstition  of  some  little  prevalence  in  that  day, 
that  the  Mississippi  would  neither  buo}'  up  a  swimmer,  nor  permit  a  drowned 
person's  body  to  rise  to  the  surface. 


CRUDE   LITERATURE.  295 

are  occupied  with  the  fetid  alligator,  while  the  panther  basks  at  its 
edge  in  the  cane-brakes,  almost  impervious  to  man.  Pouring  its 
impetuous  waters  through  wild  tracks  covered  with  trees  of  little 
value  except  for  firewood,  it  sweeps  down  whole  forests  in  its 
course,  which  disappear  in  tumultuous  confusion,  whirled  away  by 
the  stream  now  loaded  with  the  masses  of  soil  which  nourished  their 
roots,  often  blocking  up  and  changing  for  a  time  the  channel  of  the 
river,  which,  as  if  in  anger  at  its  being  opposed,  inundates  and  dev- 
astates the  whole  country  round;  and  as  soon  as  it  forces  its  way 
through  its  former  channel,  plants  in  every  direction  the  uprooted 
monarchs  of  the  forest  (upon  whose  branches  the  bird  will  never 
again  perch,  or  the  raccoon,  the  opossum,  or  the  squirrel  climb)  as 
traps  to  the  adventurous  navigators  of  its  waters  by  steam,  who, 
borne  down  upon  these  concealed  dangers  which  pierce  through  the 
planks,  very  often  have  not  time  to  steer  for  and  gain  the  shore 
before  they  sink  to  the  bottom.  There  are  no  pleasing  associations 
connected  with  the  great  common  sewer  of  the  Western  America, 
which  pojirs  out  its  mud  into  the  Mexican  Gulf,  polluting  the 
clear  blue  sea  for  many  miles  beyond  its  mouth.  It  is  a  river  of 
desolation ;  and  instead  of  reminding  you,  like  other  beautiful  rivers, 
of  an  angel  which  has  descended  for  the  benefit  of  man,  you  imagine 
it  a  devil,  whose  energies  have  been  only  overcome  by  the  wonder- 
ful power  of  steam," 

It  is  pretty  crude  literature  for  a  man  accustomed  to 
handling  a  pen ;  still,  as  a  panorama  of  the  emotions  sent 
weltering  through  this  noted  visitor's  breast  by  the  aspect 
and  traditions  of  the  "  great  common  sewer,"  it  has  a  value. 
A  value,  though  marred  in  the  matter  of  statistics  by  inac- 
curacies ;  for  the  catfish  is  a  plenty  good  enough  fish  for 
anybody,  and  there  are  no  panthers  that  are  "  impervious  to 
man." 

Later  still  comes  Alexander  Mackay,  of  the  Middle  Temple, 
Barrister  at  Law,  with  a  better  digestion,  and  no  catfish  dinner 
aboard,  and  feels  as  follows  :  — 

"  The  Mississippi !  It  was  with  indescribable  emotions  that  I  first 
felt  myself .  afloat  upon  its  waters.  How  often  in  my  school-boy 
dreams,  and  in  my  waking  visions  afterwards,  had  my  imagination 


296  THE   FIRST   SHALL   BE   LAST. 

pictured  to  itself  the  lordly  stream,  rolling  with  tumultuous  current 
through  the  boundless  region  to  which  it  has  given  its  name,  and 
gathering  into  itself,  in  its  course  to  the  ocean,  the  tributary  waters 
of  almost  every  latitude  in  the  temperate  zone !  Here  it  was  then 
in  its  reality,  and  I,  at  length,  steaming  against  its  tide.  I  looked 
upon  it  with  that  reverence  with  which  every  one  must  regard  a 
great  feature  of  external  nature." 

So  much  for  the  emotions.  The  tourists,  one  and  all, 
remark  upon  the  deep,  brooding  loneliness  and  desolation 
of  the  vast  river.  Captain  Basil  Hall,  who  saw  it  at  flood- 
stage,  says  :  — 

"  Sometimes  we  passed  along  distances  of  twenty  or  thirty  miles 
without  seeing  a  single  habitation.  An  artist,  in  search  of  hints 
for  a  painting  of  the  deluge,  would  here  have  found  them  in  abun- 
dance." 

The  first  shall  be  last,  etc.  Just  two  hundred  years  ago, 
the  old  original  first  and  gallantest  of  all  the  foreign  tourists, 
pioneer,  head  of  the  procession,  ended  his  weary  and  tedious 
discovery-voyage  down  the  solemn  stretches  of  the  great  river 
—  La  Salle,  whose  name  will  last  as  long  as  the  river  itself 
shall  last.     We  quote  from  Mr.  Parkman  :  — 

"  And  now  they  neared  their  journey's  end.  On  the  sixth  of 
April,  the  river  divided  itself  into  three  broad  channels.  La  Salle 
followed  that  of  the  west,  and  D'Autray  that  of  the  east ;  while 
Tonty  took  the  middle  passage.  As  he  drifted  down  the  turbid 
current,  between  the  low  and  marshy  shores,  the  brackish  water 
changed  to  brine,  and  the  breeze  grew  fresh  with  the  salt  breath 
of  the  sea.  Then  the  broad  bosom  of  the  great  Gulf  opened  on  his 
sight,  tossing  its  restless  billows,  limitless,  voiceless,  lonely  as  when 
born  of  chaos,  without  a  sail,  without  a  sign  of  life." 

Then,  on  a  spot  of  solid  ground,  La  Salle  reared  a  column 
"  hearing  the  arms  of  France  ;  the  Frenchmen  were  mustered 
under  arms;  and  while  the  New  England  Indians  and  their 
squaws  looked  on  in  wrondcring  silence,  they  chanted  the  Te 
Deum,  the  JZxaudiat,  and  the  Domine  salvumfac  regem" 


A   CELEBRATION   LOST. 


297 


Then,  whilst  the  musketry  volleyed  and  rejoicing  shouts 
burst  forth,  the  victorious  discoverer  planted  the  column,  and 
made  proclamation  in  a  loud  voice,  taking  formal  possession 
of  the  river  and  the  vast  countries  watered  by  it,  in  the  name 
of  the  King.     The  column  bore  this  inscription  :  — 

LOUIS    LE    GEAND,   ROY    I)E    FRANCE    ET    DE   NAVARRE,   REGNE  ; 
LE   NEUVIEME    AVRIL,   1682. 

New  Orleans  intended  to  fittingly  celebrate,  this  present 
year,  the  bicentennial  anniversary  of  this  illustrious  event ; 
but  when  the  time  came,  all  her  energies  and  surplus  money 
were  required  in  other  directions,  for  the  flood  was  upon  the 
land  then,  making  havoc  and  devastation  everywhere. 


CHAPTER  XXVIII. 


UNCLE   MUMFORD   UNLOADS. 


ALL  day  we  swung  along  down  the  river,  and  had  the 
stream  almost  wholly  to  ourselves.  Formerly,  at  such 
a  stage  of  the  water,  we  should  have  passed  acres  of  lumber 
rafts,  and  dozens  of  big  coal  barges ;  also  occasional  little 
trading-scows,  peddling  along  from  farm  to  farm,  with  the 


THE    STEAMER    "  MARK   TWAIN. 


pedler's  family  on  board ;  possibly,  a  random  scow,  bearing 

a   humble   Hamlet  and  Co.  on    an  itinerant  dramatic  trip. 

But  these  were  all   absent.     Far  along  in  the  day,  we  saw 

naboat ;    just  one,  and    no    more.      She  was   lying 

Jie  shade,  within  the  wooded  mouth  of  the  Obion 


DARKNESS   VISIBLE. 


299 


River.  The  spy-glass  revealed  the  fact  that  she  was  named 
for  me  —  or  he  was  named  for  me,  whichever  you  prefer. 
As  this  was  the  first  time  I  had  ever  encountered  this  species 
of  honor,  it  seems  excusable  to  mention  it,  and  at  the  same 
time  call  the  attention  of  the  authorities  to  the  tardiness  of 
my  recognition  of  it. 

Noted  a  big  change  in  the  river,  at  Island  21.  It  was  a 
very  large  island,  and  used  to  lie  out  toward  mid-stream ; 
but  it  is  joined  fast  to  the  main  shore  now,  and  has  retired 
from  business  as  an  island. 

As  we  approached  famous  and  formidable  Plum  Point, 
darkness  fell,  but  that  was  nothing  to  shudder  about  —  in 
these  modern  times.  For  now  the 
national  government  has  turned  the 
Mississippi  into  a  sort  of  two-thous- 
and-mile  torch-light  procession.  In 
the  head  of  every  crossing,  and  in 
the  foot  of  every  crossing,  the  gov- 
ernment has  set  up  a  clear-burning 
lamp.  You  are  never  entirely  in 
the  dark,  now;  there  is  always  a 
beacon  in  sight,  either  before  you, 
or  behind  you,  or  abreast.  One 
might  almost  say  that  lamps  have 
been  squandered  there.  Dozens  of 
crossings  are  lighted  which  were 
not  shoal  when  they  were  created, 
and  have  never  been  shoal  since  ; 
crossings    so   plain,  too,   and   also 

so  straight,  that  a  steamboat  can  take  herself  through  them 
without  any  help,  after  she  has  been  through  once.  Lamps 
in  such  places  are  of  course  not  wasted  ;  it  is  much  more 
convenient  and  comfortable  for  a  pilot  to  hold  on  them  than 
on  a  spread  of  formless  blackness  that  won't  stay  still :  and 
money  is  saved  to  the  boat,  at  the  same  time,  foi 
of  course  make  more  miles  with  her  rudder  amids 


A    GOVERNMENT   LAMP. 


400 


NO   MORE   ANXIETY. 


she  can  with  it  squared  across  her  stern  and  holding  her 
back. 

But  this  thing  has  knocked  the  romance  out  of  piloting, 
to  a  large  extent.  It  and  some  other  things  together,  have 
knocked  all  the  romance  out  of  it.  For  instance,  the  peril 
from  snags"  is  not  now  what  it  once  was.  The  government's 
snag-boats  go  patrolling  up  and  down,  in  these  matter-of-fact 
days,  pulling  the  river's  teeth ;  they  have  rooted  out  all  the 
old  clusters  which  made  many  localities  so  formidable ;  and 
they  allow  no  new  ones  to  collect.  Formerly,  if  your  boat 
got  away  from  you,  on  a  black  night,  and  broke  for  the 
woods,  it  was  an  anxious  time  with  you ;  so  was  it  also, 


when  you  were  groping  your  way  through  solidified  dark- 
ness in  a  narrow  chute  ;  but  all  that  is  changed  now,  — you 
flash  out  your  electric  light,  transform  night  into  day  in  the 
twinkling  of  an  eye,  and  your  perils  and  anxieties  are  at  an 
end.  Horace  Bixby  and  George  Ritchie  have  charted  the 
crossings  and  laid  out  the  courses  by  compass ;  they  have 
invented  a  lamp  to  go  with  the  chart,  and  have  patented  the 
whole.  With  these  helps,  one  may  run  in  the  fog  now,  with 
considerable  security,  and  with  a  confidence  unknown  in  the 
old  davs. 

Tliese  abundant  beacons,  the  banishment  of  snags, 
daylight  in  a  box  and  ready  to  be  turned  on  when- 


CAPTAINS   PROMOTED. 


301 


ever  needed,  and  a  chart  and  compass  to  fight  the  fog  with, 
piloting,  at  a  good  stage  of  water,  is  now  nearly  as  safe  and 
simple  as  driving  stage,  and  is  hardly  more  than  three  times 
as  romantic. 

And  now  in  these  new  days,  these  days  of  infinite  change, 
the  Anchor  Line  have  raised  the  captain  above  the  pilot  by 
giving  him  the  bigger  wages  of  the  two.  This  was  going 
far,  but  they  have  not  stopped  there.  They  have  decreed 
that  the  pilot  shall  remain  at  his  post,  and  stand  his  watch 
clear  through,  whether  the  boat  be  under  way  or  tied  up 
to  the  shore.  We,  that  were  once  the  aristocrats  of  the 
river,  can't  go  to  bed  now,  as  we  used  to  do,  and  sleep  while 


RUNNING  IN  A   FOG. 


a  hundred  tons  of  freight  are  lugged  aboard  ;  no,  we  must 
sit  in  the  pilot-house  ;  and  keep  awake,  too.  Yerily  we  are 
being  treated  like  a  parcel  of  mates  and  engineers.  The 
Government  has  taken  away  the  romance  of  our  calling  ;  the 
Company  has  taken  away  its  state  and  dignity. 

Plum  Point  looked  as  it  had  always  looked  by  night,  with 
the  exception  that  now  there  were  beacons  to  mark  the  cross- 
ings, and  also  a  lot  of  other  lights  on  the  Point  and  along 
its  shore ;  these  latter  glinting  from  the  fleet  of  the  United 
States  River  Commission,  and  from  a  village  which  the  offi- 
cials have  built  on  the  land  for  offices  and  for  the  er~  I?"  4s 
of  the  service.     The  militarv  engineers  of  the  Cor 


302  DIKES  AND   WING-DAMS. 

have  taken  upon  their  shoulders  the  job  of  making  the  Mis- 
sissippi over  again,  —  a  job  transcended  in  size  by  only  the 
original  job  of  creating  it.  They  are  building  wing-dams 
here  and  there,  to  deflect  the  current ;  and  dikes  to  confine 
it  in  narrower  bounds ;  and  other  dikes  to  make  it  stay 
there  ;  and  for  unnumbered  miles  along  the  Mississippi,  they 
are  felling  the  timber-front  for  fifty  yards  back,  with  the  pur- 
pose of  shaving  the  bank  down  to  low-water  mark  with  the 
slant  of  a  house-roof,  and  ballasting  it  with  stones  ;  and  in 
many  places  they  have  protected  the  wasting  shores  with 
rows  of  piles.  One  who  knows  the  Mississippi  will  promptly 
aver  —  not  aloud,  but  to  himself  —  that  ten  thousand  River 
Commissions,  with  the  mines  of  the  world  at  their  back,  cannot 
tame  that  lawless  stream,  cannot  curb  it  or  confine  it,  can- 
not say  to  it,  Go  here,  or  Go  there,  and  make  it  obey ;  cannot 
save  a  shore  which  it  has  sentenced ;  cannot  bar  its  path 
with  an  obstruction  which  it  will  not  tear  down,  dance  over, 
and  laugh  at.  But  a  discreet  man  will  not  put  these  things 
into  spoken  words ;  for  the  West  Point  engineers  have  not 
their  superiors  anywhere  ;  they  know  all  that  can  be  known 
of  their  abstruse  science  ;  and  so,  since  they  conceive  that 
they  can  fetter  and  handcuff  that  river  and  boss  him,  it  is 
but  wisdom  for  the  unscientific  man  to  keep  still,  lie  low,  and 
wait  till  they  do  it.  Captain  Eads,  with  his  jetties,  has  done 
a  work  at  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi  which  seemed  clearly 
impossible  ;  so  we  do  not  feel  full  confidence  now  to  prophesy 
against  like  impossibilities.  Otherwise  one  would  pipe  out 
and  say  the  Commission  might  as  well  bully  the  comets  in 
their  courses  and  undertake  to  make  them  behave,  as  try  to 
bully  the  Mississippi  into  right  and  reasonable  conduct. 

I  consulted  Uncle  Mumford  concerning  this  and  cognate 
matters ;  and  I  give  here  the  result,  stenographically 
reported,  and  therefore  to  be  relied  on  as  being  full  and  cor- 
rect ;  except  that  I  have  here  and  there  left  out  remarks 
which  were  addressed  to  the  men,  such  as  "  where  in  blazes 

'*oing  with  that  barrel  now  ?  "  and  which  seemed  to 

i 


UNCLE   MUMFORD.  303 

me  to  break  the  flow  of  the  written  statement,  without  com- 
pensating by  adding  to  its  information  or  its  clearness.  Not 
that  I  have  ventured  to  strike  out  all  such  interjections ;  I 
have  removed  only  those  which  were  obviously  irrelevant ; 
wherever  one  occurred  which  I  felt  any  question  about,  I 
have  judged  it  safest  to  let  it  remain. 

UNCLE  MUMFORD'S   IMPRESSIONS. 

Uncle  Mumford  said  :  — 

"As  long  as  I  have  been  mate  of  a  steamboat,  —  thirty 
years  —  I  have  watched  this  river  and  studied  it.  Maybe  I 
could  have  learnt  more  about  it  at  West  Point,  but  if  1 
believe  it  I  wish  I  may  beWHAT  are  you  sucking  your  fingers 
there  for  ?  —  Collar  that  kag  of  nails  !  Four  years  at  West 
Point,  and  plenty  of  books  and  schooling,  will  learn  a  man  a 
good  deal,  I  reckon,  but  it  won't  learn  him  the  river.  You  turn 
one  of  those  little  European  rivers  over  to  this  Commission, 
with  its  hard  bottom  and  clear  water,  and  it  would  just  be  a 
holiday  job  for  them  to  wall  it,  and  pile  it,  and  dike  it,  and 
tame  it  down,  and  boss  it  around,  and  make  it  go  wherever 
they  wanted  it  to,  and  stay  where  they  put  it,  and  do  just  as 
they  said,  every  time.  But  this  ain't  that  kind  of  a  river. 
They  have  started  in  here  with  big  confidence,  and  the  best 
intentions  in  the  world  ;  but  they  are  going  to  get  left.  What 
does  Ecclesiastes  vii.  13  say  ?  Says  enough  to  knock  their 
little  game  galley-west,  don't  it?  Now  you  look  at  their 
methods  once.  There  at  Devil's  Island,  in  the  Upper  River, 
they  wanted  the  water  to  go  one  way,  the  water  wanted  to  go 
another.  So  they  put  up  a  stone  wall.  But  what  does  the 
river  care  for  a  stone  wall  ?  When  it  got  ready,  it  just 
bulged  through  it.  Maybe  they  can  build  another  that  will 
stay ;  that  is,  up  there  —  but  not  down  here  they  can't. 
Down  here  in  the  Lower  River,  they  drive  some  pegs  to  turn 
the  water  away  from  the  shore  and  stop  it  from  slicing  off 
the  bank  ;  very  well,  don't  it  go  straight  over  and  c 


304  PEGGING   THE   RIVER. 

body  else's  bank  ?  Certainly.  Are  they  going  to  peg  all  the 
banks  ?  Why,  they  could  buy  ground  and  build  a  new  Mis- 
sissippi cheaper.  They  are  pegging  Bulletin  Tow-head  now. 
It  won't  do  any  good.  If  the  river  has  got  a  mortgage  on 
that  island,  it  will  foreclose,  sure,  pegs  or  no  pegs.  Away 
down  yonder,  they  have  driven  two  rows  of  piles  straight 
through  the  middle  of  a  dry  bar  half  a  mile  long,  which  is 
forty  foot  out  of  the  water  when  the  river  is  low.  What  do 
you  reckon  that  is  for  ?  If  I  know,  I  wish  I  may  land  in- 
HUMP  yourself,  you  so?i  of  an  undertaker ! — -out  with  thai 
coal-oil,  noiv,  lively,  lively  !  And  just  look  at  what  they  are 
trying  to  do  down  there  at  Milliken's  Bend.  There 's  been  a 
cut-off  in  that  section,  and  Vicksburg  is  left  out  in  the  cold. 
It 's  a  country  town  now.  The  river  strikes  in  below  it ;  and 
a  boat  can't  go  up  to  the  town  except  in  high  water.  Well, 
they  are  going  to  build  wing-dams  in  the  bend  opposite  the 
foot  of  103,  and  throw  the  water  over  and  cut  off  the  foot 
of  the  island  and  plow  down  into  an  old  ditch  where  the 
river  used  to  be  in  ancient  times ;  and  they  think  they  can 
persuade  the  water  around  that  way,  and  get  it  to  strike  in 
above  Vicksburg,  as  it  used  to  do,  and  fetch  the  town  back 
into  the  world  again.  That  is,  they  are  going  to  take  this 
whole  Mississippi,  and  twist  it  around  and  make  it  run  sev- 
eral miles  up  stream.  Well,  you've  got  to  admire  men  that 
deal  in  ideas  of  that  size  and  can  tote  them  around  without 
crutches  ;  but  you  have  n't  got  to  believe  they  can  do  such 
miracles,  have  you  ?  And  yet  you  ain't  absolutely  obliged  to 
believe  they  can't.  I  reckon  the  safe  way,  where  a  man  can 
afford  it,  is  to  copper  the  operation,  and  at  the  same  time 
buy  enough  property  in  Vicksburg  to  square  you  up  in  case 
they  win.  Government  is  doing  a  deal  for  the  Mississippi, 
now  —  spending  loads  of  money  on  her.  When  there  used 
to  be  four  thousand  steamboats  and  ten  thousand  acres  of 
coal-barges,  and  rafts  and  trading  scows,  there  was  n't  a  lan- 
tern from  St.  Paul  to  New  Orleans,  and  the  sna^s  were  thicker 
Ties  on  a  hog's  back  ;  and  now  when  there 's  three 


UNCLE    MUMFOBJ). 


CONFUSING   OPINIONS.  307 

dozen  steamboats  and  nary  barge  or  raft,  Government  has 
snatched  out  all  the  snags,  and  lit  up  the  shores  like  Broad- 
way, and  a  boat 's  as  safe  on  the  river  as  she  'd  be  in  heaven. 
And  I  reckon  that  by  the  time  there  ain't  any  boats  left  at  all, 
the  Commission  will  have  the  old  thing  all  reorganized,  and 
dredged  out,  and  fenced  in,  and  tidied  up,  to  a  degree  that 
will  make  navigation  just  simply  perfect,  and  absolutely 
safe  and  profitable ;  and  all  the  days  will  be  Sundays,  and  all 
the  mates  will  be  Sunday-school  suWHAT-in-the-nation-you- 
fooling-around-there-for,  you  sons  of  unrighteousness,  heirs  of 
perdition  !    doing  to  be  a  year  getting  that  hogshead  ashore?  " 

During  our  trip  to  New  Orleans  and  back,  we  had  many 
conversations  with  river  men,  planters,  journalists,  and  offi- 
cers of  the  River  Commission  —  with  conflicting  and  confus- 
ing results.     To  wit :  — 

1.  Some  believed  in  the  Commission's  scheme  to  arbitrarily 
and  permanently  confine  (and  thus  deepen)  the  channel, 
preserve  threatened  shores,  etc. 

2.  Some  believed  that  the  Commission's  money  ought  to 
be  spent  only  on  building  and  repairing  the  great  system  of 
levees. 

3.  Some  believed  that  the  higher  you  build  your  levee, 
the  higher  the  river's  bottom  will  rise ;  and  that  conse- 
quently the  levee  system  is  a  mistake. 

4.  Some  believed  in  the  scheme  to  relieve  the  river,  in 
flood-time,  by  turning  its  surplus  waters  off  into  Lake 
Borgne,  etc. 

5.  Some  believed  in  the  scheme  of  northern  lake-reservoirs 
to  replenish  the  Mississippi  in  low-water  seasons. 

Wherever  you  find  a  man  down  there  who  believes  in  one 
of  these  theories  you  may  turn  to  the  next  man  and  frame 
your  talk  upon  the  hypothesis  that  he  does  not  believe  in  that 
theory ;  and  after  you  have  had  experience,  you  do  not  take 
this  course  doubtfully,  or  hesitatingly,  but  with  the  confi- 
dence of  a  dying  murderer  —  converted  one,  I  mean.   For  you 


808 


DISEASE   AND   CUKE. 


will  have  come  to  know,  with  a  deep  and  restful  certainty, 
that  you  are  not  going  to  meet  two  people  sick  of  the  same 
theory,  one  right  after  the  other.     No,  there  will  always  be 


TALKING   OVER   THE   SITUATION. 


one  or  two  witli  the  other  diseases  along  between.  And  as 
you  proceed,  you  will  find  out  one  or  two  other  things.  You 
will  find  out  that  there  is  no  distemper  of  the  lot  but  is  con- 
tagious ;  and  you  cannot  go  where  it  is  without  catching  it. 
You  may  vaccinate  yourself  with  deterrent  facts  as  much  as 


A   VALUABLE   OPINION.  309 

you  please  —  it  will  do  no  good  ;  it  will  seem  to  "  take,"  but 
it  does  n't ;  the  moment  you  rub  against  any  one  of  those 
theorists,  make  up  your  mind  that  it  is  time  to  hang  out 
your  yellow  flag. 

Yes,  you  are  his  sure  victim  :  yet  his  work  is  not  all  to 
your  hurt  —  only  part  of  it ;  for  he  is  like  your  family  phy- 
sician, who  comes  and  cures  the  mumps,  and  leaves  the 
scarlet-fever  behind.  If  your  man  is  a  Lake-Borgne-relief 
theorist,  for  instance,  he  will  exhale  a  cloud  of  deadly  facts 
and  statistics  which  will  lay  you  out  with  that  disease,  sure  ; 
but  at  the  same  time  he  will  cure  you  of  any  other  of  the 
five  theories  that  may  have  previously  got  into  your  system. 

I  have  had  all  the  five  ;  and  had  them  "  bad ; "  but  ask 
me  not,  in  mournful  numbers,  which  one  racked  me  hardest, 
or  which  one  numbered  the  biggest  sick  list,  for  I  do  not 
know.  In  truth,  no  one  can  answer  the  latter  question. 
Mississippi  Improvement  is  a  mighty  topic,  down  yonder. 
Every  man  on  the  river  banks,  south  of  Cairo,  talks  about  it 
every  day,  during  such  moments  as  he  is  able  to  spare  from 
talking  about  the  war ;  and  each  of  the  several  chief  theories 
has  its  host  of  zealous  partisans  ;  but,  as  I  have  said,  it  is  not 
possible  to  determine  which  cause  numbers  the  most  recruits. 

All  were  agreed  upon  one  point,  however :  if  Congress 
would  make  a  sufficient  appropriation,  a  colossal  benefit 
would  result.  Very  well ;  since  then  the  appropriation  has 
been  made  —  possibly  a  sufficient  one,  certainly  not  too  large 
a  one.  Let  us  hope  that  the  prophecy  will  be  amply  ful- 
filled. 

One  thing  will  be  easily  granted  by  the  reader ;  that  an 
opinion  from  Mr.  Edward  Atkinson,  upon  any  vast  national 
commercial  matter,  comes  as  near  ranking  as  authority,  as 
can  the  opinion  of  any  individual  in  the  Union.  What  he 
has  to  say  about  Mississippi  River  Improvement  will  be 
found  in  the  Appendix.1 

1  See  Appendix  B. 


310  THE   VALUE   OF   TOWAGE. 

Sometimes,  half  a  dozen  figures  will  reveal,  as  with  a  light- 
ning-flash, the  importance  of  a  subject  which  ten  thousand 
labored  words,  with  the  same  purpose  in  view,  had  left  at 
last  but  dim  and  uncertain.  Here  is  a  case  of  the  sort  — 
paragraph  from  the  "  Cincinnati  Commercial :  "  — 

"  The  towboat  '  Jos.  B.  Williams '  is  on  her  way  to  New  Orleans 
with  a  tow  of  thirty-two  barges,  containing  six  hundred  thousand 
bushels  (seventy-six  pounds  to  the  bushel)  of  coal  exclusive  of  her 
own  fuel,  being  the  largest  tow  ever  taken  to  New  Orleans  or  any- 
where else  in  the  world.  Her  freight  bill,  at  3  cents  a  bushel, 
amounts  to  $18,000.     It  would  take  eighteen  hundred  cars,  of  three 


hundred  and  thirty-three  bushels  to  the  car,  to  transport  this  amount 
of  coal.  At  $10  per  ton,  or  $100  per  car,  which  would  be  a  fair 
price  for  the  distance  by  rail,  the  freight  bill  would  amount  to 
$180,000,  or  $162,000  more  by  rail  than  by  river.  The  tow  will 
be  taken  from  Pittsburg  to  New  Orleans  in  fourteen  or  fifteen  days. 
It  would  take  one  hundred  trains  of  eighteen  cars  to  the  train  to 
transport  this  one  tow  of  six  hundred  thousand  bushels  of  coal,  and 
even  if  it  made  the  usual  speed  of  fast  freight  lines,  it  would  take 
one  whole  summer  to  put  it  through  by  rail." 

When  a  river  in  good  condition  can  enable  one  to  save 
$162,000  and  a  whole  summer's  time,  on  a  single  cargo,  the 
wisdom  of  taking  measures  to  keep  the  river  in  good  condi- 
tion is  made  plain  to  even  the  uncommercial  mind. 


CHAPTER  XXIX. 

A   FEW  SPECIMEN  BRICKS. 

"\  T  7E  passed  through  the  Plum  Point  region,  turned  Craig- 
V  *  head's  Point,  and  glided  unchallenged  by  what  was 
once  the  formidable  Fort  Pillow,  memorable  because  of  the 
massacre  perpetrated  there  during  the  war.  Massacres  are 
sprinkled  with  some  frequency  through  the  histories  of  sev- 
eral Christian  nations,  but  this  is  almost  the  only  one  that 
can  be  found  in  American  history ;  perhaps  it  is  the  only  one 
which  rises  to  a  size  correspondent  to  that  huge  and  sombre 
title.  We  have  the  "  Boston  Massacre,"  where  two  or  three 
people  were  killed ;  but  we  must  bunch  Anglo-Saxon  history 
together  to  find  the  fellow  to  the  Fort  Pillow  tragedy ;  and 
doubtless  even  then  we  must  travel  back  to  the  days  and  the 
performances  of  Cceur  de  Lion,  that  fine  "  hero,"  before  we 
accomplish  it. 

More  of  the  river's  freaks.  In  times  past,  the  channel 
used  to  strike  above  Island  37,  by  Brandywine  Bar,  and 
down  towards  Island  39.  Afterward,  changed  its  course 
and  went  from  Brandywine  down  through  Vogelman's  chute 
in  the  Devil's  Elbow,  to  Island  39 — part  of  this  course 
reversing  the  old  order ;  the  river  running  up  four  or  five 
miles,  instead  of  down,  and  cutting  off,  throughout,  some 
fifteen  miles  of  distance.  This  in  1876.  All  thai  region 
is  now  called  Centennial  Island. 

There  is  a  tradition  that  Island  37  was  one  of  tlie 
principal  abiding  places  of  the  once  celebrated  "  Murel's 
Gang."  This  was  a  colossal  combination  of  robbers,  horse- 
thieves,  negro-stealers,  and  counterfeiters,  engaged  in  busi- 


312 


JAMES  OUTDONE. 


ness  along  the  river  some  fifty  or  sixty  years  ago.  While 
our  journey  across  the  country  towards  St.  Louis  was  in 
progress  we  had  had  no  end  of  Jesse  James  and  his  stirring 
history ;  for  he  had  just  been  assassinated  by  an  agent  of 

the  Governor  of  Mis- 
souri, and  was  in  con- 
sequence occupying  a 
good  deal  of  space  in 
the  newspapers. 
Cheap  histories  of 
him  were  for  sale  by 
train  boys.  Accord- 
ing to  these,  he  was 
the  most  marvellous 
creature  of  his  kind 
that  had  ever  existed. 
It  was  a  mistake. 
Murel  was  his  equal 
in  boldness ;  in  pluck ; 
in  rapacity  ;  in  cruel- 
ty, brutality,  heart- 
lessness,  treachery, 
and  in  general  and 
comprehensive  vile- 
ness  and  shamelessness  ;  and  very  much  his  superior  in  some 
larger  aspects.  James  was  a  retail  rascal ;  Murel,  whole- 
sale. James's  modest  genius  dreamed  of  no  loftier  flight 
than  the  planning  of  raids  upon  cars,  coaches,  and  country 
banks  ;  Murel  projected  negro  insurrections  and  the  capture 
of  New  Orleans ;  and  furthermore,  on  occasion,  this  Murel 
could  go  into  a  pulpit  and  edify  the  congregation.  What 
are  James  and  his  half-dozen  vulgar  rascals  compared 
with  this  stately  old-time  criminal,  with  his  sermons,  his 
meditated  insurrections  and  city-captures,  and  his  ma- 
jestic following  of  ten  hundred  men,  sworn  to  do  his  evil 
will! 


A   SOUL-MOVING   VILLAIN. 


A  FORGOTTEN  BOOK. 


313 


Here  is  a  paragraph  or  two  concerning  this  big  operator, 
from  a  now  forgotten  book  which  was  published  half  a  cen- 
tury ago :  — 

He  appears  to  have  been  a  most  dexterous  as  well  as  consummate 
villain.     When  he  travelled,  his  usual  disguise  was  that  of  an  itiner- 


SELLING   THE    NEGRO. 


ant  preacher ;  and  it  is  said  that  his  discourses  were  very  "  soul- 
moving  "  —  interesting  the  hearers  so  much  that  they  forgot  to  look 
after  their  horses,  which  were  carried  away  by  his  confederates  while 


314 


LUCRATIVE   VILLANY. 


he  was  preaching.  But  the  stealing  of  horses  in  one  State,  and  selling 
them  in  another,  was  but  a  small  portion  of  their  business ;  the  most 
lucrative  was  the  enticing  slaves  to  run  away  from  their  masters, 
that  they  might  sell  them  in  another  quarter.  This  was  arranged 
as  follows ;  they  would  tell  a  negro  that  if  he  would  run  away  from 
his  master,  and  allow  them  to  sell  him,  he  should  receive  a  portion 
of  the  money  paid  for  him,  and  that  upon  his  return  to  them  a 
second  time  they  would  send  him  to  a  free  State,  where  he  would 
be  safe.     The   poor  wretches  complied  with  this  request,  hoping  to 

obtain  money  and  free- 
dom ;  they  would  be 
sold  to  another  master, 
and  run  away  again  to 
their  employers ;  some- 
times they  would  be 
sold  in  this  manner 
three  or  four  times,  un- 
til they  had  realized 
three  or  four  thousand 
dollars  by  them  ;  but  as, 
after  this,  there  was 
fear  of  detection,  the 
usual  custom  was  to  get 
rid  of  the  only  witness 
that  could  be  produced 
against  them,  which  was 
the  negro  himself,  by 
murdering  him,  and 
throwing  his  body  into 
the  Mississippi.  Even 
if  it  was  established  that 
they  had  stolen  a  negro, 
before  he  was  murdered, 
they  were  always  prepared  to  evade  punishment;  for  they  con- 
cealed the  negro  who  had  run  away,  until  he  was  advertised, 
and  a  reward  offered  to  any  man  who  would  catch  him.  An  adver- 
tisement of  this  kind  warrants  the  person  to  take  the  property,  if 
found.     And    then  the    negro  becomes  a  property  in  trust,  when, 


CONCEALED    IN   THE    BRAKE 


A  SWEEPING  COMBINATION.  315 

therefore,  they  sold  the  negro,  it  only  became  a  breach  of  trust, 
not  stealing ;  and  for  a  breach  of  trust,  the  owner  of  the  property 
can  only  have  redress  by  a  civil  action,  which  was  useless,  as  the 
damages  were  never  paid.  It  may  be  inquired,  how  it  was  that 
Murel  escaped  Lynch  law  under  such  circumstances  ?  This  will  be 
easily  understood  when  it  is  stated  that  he  had  more  than  a  thou- 
sand sworn  confederates,  all  ready  at  a  moment's  notice  to  support 
any  of  the  gang  who  might  be  in  trouble.  The  names  of  all  the 
principal  confederates  of  Murel  were  obtained  from  himself,  in  a 
manner  which  I  shall  presently  explain.  The  gang  was  composed 
of  two  classes :  the  Heads  or  Council,  as  they  were  called,  who 
planned  and  concerted,  but  seldom  acted ;  they  amounted  to  about 
four  hundred.  The  other  class  were  the  active  agents,  and  were 
termed  strikers,  and  amounted  to  about  six  hundred  and  fifty. 
These  were  the  tools  in  the  hands  of  the  others ;  they  ran  all  the 
risk,  and  received  but  a  small  portion  of  the  money ;  they  were  in 
the  power  of  the  leaders  of  the  gang,  who  would  sacrifice  them  at 
any  time  by  handing  them  over  to  justice,  or  sinking  their  bodies  in 
the  Mississippi.  The  general  rendezvous  of  this  gang  of  miscreants 
was  on  the  Arkansas  side  of  the  river,  where  they  concealed  their 
negroes  in  the  morasses  and  cane-brakes. 

The  depredations  of  this  extensive  combination  were  severely 
felt ;  but  so  well  were  their  plans  arranged,  that  although  Murel, 
who  was  always  active,  was  everywhere  suspected,  there  was  no 
proof  to  be  obtained.  It  so  happened,  however,  that  a  young  man 
of  the  name  of  Stewart,  who  was  looking  after  two  slaves  which 
Murel  had  decoyed  away,  fell  in  with  him  and  obtained  his  confi- 
dence, took  the  oath,  and  was  admitted  into  the  gang  as  one  of 
the  General  Council.  By  this  means  all  was  discovered  ;  for  Stew- 
art turned  traitor,  although  he  had  taken  the  oath,  and  having 
obtained  every  information,  exposed  the  whole  concern,  the  names 
of  all  the  parties,  and  finally  succeeded  in  bringing  home  sufficient 
evidence  against  Murel,  to  procure  his  conviction  and  sentence  to 
the  Penitentiary  (Murel  was  sentenced  to  fourteen  years'  imprison- 
ment) ;  so  many  people  who  were  supposed  to  be  honest,  and  bore  a 
respectable  name  in  the  different  States,  were  found  to  be  among  the 
list  of  the  Grand  Council  as  published  by  Stewart,  that  every  attempt 
was  made   to  throw  discredit  upon  his  assertions  —  his   character 


316 


A   STUPENDOUS   CONSPIRACY. 


was  vilified,  and  more  than  one  attempt  was  made  to  assassinate 
him.  He  was  obliged  to  quit  the  Southern  States  in  consequence.  It 
is,  however,  now  well  ascertained  to  have  been  all  true ;  and  although 
some  blame  Mr.  Stewart  for  having  violated  his  oath,  they  no  longer 
attempt  to  deny  that  his  revelations  were  correct.  I  will  quote 
one  or  two  portions  of  Murel's  confessions  to  Mr.  Stewart,  made 
to  him   when  they  were  journeying    together.     I  ought   to  have 

observed,  that  the  ul- 
timate intentions  of 
Murel  and  his  asso- 
ciates were,  by  his 
own  account,  on  a 
very  extended  scale ; 
having  no  less  an  ob- 
ject in  view  than 
raising  the  blacks 
against  the  whites, 
taking  possession  of, 
and  plundering  New 
Orleans,  and  making 
themselves  possessors 
of  the  territory.  The 
following  are  a  few 
extracts :  — 

"I  collected  all 
my  friends  about 
New  Orleans  at  one 
of  our  friends'  hous- 
es in  that  place,  and 
we  sat  in  council 
three  days  before  we 
got  all  our  plans  to  our  notion ;  we  then  determined  to  undertake 
the  rebellion  at  every  hazard,  and  make  as  many  friends  as  we  could 
for  that  purpose.  Every  man's  business  being  assigned  him,  I 
started  to  Natchez  on  foot,  having  sold  my  horse  in  New  Orleans, 
— with  the  intention  of  stealing  another  after  I  started.  I  walked 
four  days,  and  no  opportunity  offered  for  me  to  get  a  horse.  The 
fifth  day,  about  twelve,  I  had  become  tired,  and  stopped  at  a  creek 


MAN    CAME   IN    SIGHT. 


SHORT   SHRIFT. 


317 


to  get  some  water  and  rest  a  little.     While  I  was  sitting  on  a  log, 

looking  down  the  road  the  way  that  I  had  come,  a  man   came  in 

sight  riding  on  a  good-looking  horse.     The  very  moment  I  saw  him, 

I  was  determined  to 

have  his  horse,  if  he 

was  in  the  garb  of 

a  travel  ler.    He 

rode  up,  and  I  saw 

from    his    equipage 

that  he  was  a  trav- 


'  i  J  j: 


I  SHOT  HIM  THROUGH  THE  HEAD. 


eller.  I  arose  and  drew  an  elegant  rifle  pistol  on  him  and  ordered 
him  to  dismount.  He  did  so,  and  I  took  his  horse  by  the  bridle 
and  pointed  down  the  creek,  and  ordered  him  to  walk  before  me. 
He  went  a  few  hundred  yards  and  stopped.  I  hitched  his  horse, 
and  then  made  him  undress  himself,  all  to  his  shirt  and  drawers, 


318  RICH  PLUNDER. 

and  ordered  him  to  turn  his  back  to  me.  He  said,  '  If  you  are  deter- 
mined to  kill  me,  let  me  have  time  to  pray  before  I  die.'  I  told 
him  I  had  no  time  to  hear  him  pray.  He  turned  around  and 
dropped  on  his  knees,  and  I  shot  him  through  the  back  of  the 
head.  I  ripped  open  his  belly  and  took  out  his  entrails,  and  sunk 
him  in  the  creek.  I  then  searched  his  pockets,  and  found  four  hun- 
dred dollars  and  thirty  seven  cents,  and  a  number  of  papers  that 
I  did  not  take  time  to  examine.  I  sunk  the  pocket-book  and 
papers  and  his  hat,  in  the  creek.  His  boots  were  bran-new,  and 
fitted  me  genteelly ;  and  I  put  them  on  and  sunk  my  old  shoes  in  the 
creek,  to  atone  for  them.  I  rolled  up  his  clothes  and  put  them 
into  his  portmanteau,  as  they  were  bran-new  cloth  of  the  best 
quality.  I  mounted  as  fine  a  horse  as  ever  I  straddled,  and 
directed  my  course  for  Natchez  in  much  better  style  than  I  had 
been  for  the  last  five  days. 

"  Myself  and  a  fellow  by  the  name  of  Crenshaw  gathered  four 
good  horses  and  started  for  Georgia.  We  got  in  company  with  a 
young  South  Carolinian  just  before  we  got  to  Cumberland  Moun- 
tain, and  Crenshaw  soon  knew  all  about  his  business.  He  had  been 
to  Tennessee  to  buy  a  drove  of  hogs,  but  when  he  got  there  pork 
was  dearer  than  he  calculated,  and  he  declined  purchasing.  We 
concluded  he  was  a  prize.  Crenshaw  winked  at  me  ;  I  understood 
his  idea.  Crenshaw  had  travelled  the  road  before,  but  I  never  had ; 
we  had  travelled  several  miles  on  the  mountain,  when  he  passed  near 
a  great  precipice  ;  just  before  we  passed  it  Crenshaw  asked  me  for 
my  whip,  which  had  a  pound  of  lead  in  the  butt ;  I  handed  it  to  him, 
and  he  rode  up  by  the  side  of  the  South  Carolinian,  and  gave  him  a 
blow  on  the  side  of  the  head  and  tumbled  him  from  his  horse  ;  we 
lit  from  our  horses  and  fingered  his  pockets  ;  we  got  twelve  hundred 
and  sixty-two  dollars.  Crenshaw  said  he  knew  a  place  to  hide  him, 
and  he  gathered  him  under  his  arms,  and  I  by  his  feet,  and  con- 
veyed him  to  a  deep  crevice  in  the  brow  of  the  precipice,  and 
tumbled  him  into  it,  and  he  went  out  of  sight ;  we  then  tumbled 
in  his  saddle,  and  took  his  horse  with  us,  which  was  worth  two  hun- 
dred dollars. 

"  We  were  detained  a  few  days,  and  during  that  time  our  friend 
went  to  a  little  village  in  the  neighborhood  and  saw  the  negro 
advertised  (a  negro  in  our  possession),  and  a   description  of  the 


MORE   MURDERS. 


319 


two  men   of  whom  he  had  been   purchased,  and  giving  his  sus- 
picions of  the  men.     It  was  rather  squally  times,  but  any  port  in 

a  storm :  we  took 
the  negro  that  night 
on  the  bank  of 
a  creek  which  runs 
by  the  farm  of 
our  friend,  and 
Crenshaw  shot  him 


ANOTHER    VICTIM. 


through  the  head.     We  took  out  his  entrails  and  sunk  him  in  the 
creek. 

"  He  had  sold  the  other  negro  the  third  time  on  Arkansaw  River 
for  upwards  of  five  hundred  dollars  ;   and  then  stole  him  and  deliv- 


320 


NEARING   MEMPHIS. 


ered  him  into  the  hand  of  his  friend,  who  conducted  him  to  a  swamp, 
and  veiled  the  tragic  scene,  and  got  the  last  gleanings  and  sacred 
pledge  of  secrecy ;  as  a  game  of  that  kind  will  not  do  unless  it  ends 
in  a  mystery  to  all  but  the  fraternity.     He  sold  the  negro,  first  and 

last,    for     nearly 
f     (,  two    thousand    dol- 

lars, and  the  n 
put  him  forever 
out  of  the  reacli 
of  all  pursuers  ; 
and  they  can 
never  graze  him 
unless  they  can 
find  the  negro ; 
and  that  they 
cannot  do,  for  his 
carcass  has  fed 
many  a  tortoise 
and  catfish  before 
this  time,  and  the 
frogs  have  sung 
this  many  a  long 
day  to  the  silent 
repose  of  his 
skeleton." 

We  were  ap- 
proaching 

Memphis,  in 
front  of  which 
city,    and    wit- 
nessed by   its 
people,    was 
fought     the 
most  famous  of 
the  river  battles  of  the  Civil  War.     Two  men  whom  I  had 
served  under,  in  my  river  days,  took  part  in  that  fight :  Mr. 
Bixby,  head  pilot  of  the  Union  fleet,  and  Montgomery,  Com- 


PLEASANTLY   SITUATED. 


DISASTROUS   TIMES.  321 

modore  of  the  Confederate  fleet.  Both  saw  a  great  deal  of 
active  service  during  the  war,  and  achieved  high  reputations 
for  pluck  and  capacity. 

As  we  neared  Memphis,  we  began  to  cast  about  for  an 
excuse  to  stay  with  the  "  Gold  Dust "  to  the  end  of  her 
course  —  Vicksburg.  We  were  so  pleasantly  situated,  that 
we  did  not  wish  to  make  a  change.  I  had  an  errand  of 
considerable  importance  to  do  at  Napoleon,  Arkansas,  but 
perhaps  I  could  manage  it  without  quitting  the  "  Gold  Dust." 
I  said  as  much ;  so  we  decided  to  stick  to  present  quarters. 

The  boat  was  to  tarry  at  Memphis  till  ten  the  next  morn- 
ing. It  is  a  beautiful  city,  nobly  situated  on  a  commanding 
bluff  overlooking  the  river.  The  streets  are  straight  and 
spacious,  though  not  paved  in  a  way  to  incite  distempered 
admiration.  No,  the  admiration  must  be  reserved  for  the 
town's  sewerage  system,  which  is  called  perfect ;  a  recent 
reform,  however,  for  it  was  just  the  other  way,  up  to  a  few 
years  ago  —  a  reform  resulting  from  the  lesson  taught  by  a 
desolating  visitation  of  the  yellow-fever.  In  those  awful 
days  the  people  were  swept  off  by  hundreds,  by  thousands ; 
and  so  great  was  the  reduction  caused  by  flight  and  by  death 
together,  that  the  population  was  diminished  three-fourths, 
and  so  remained  for  a  time.  Business  stood  nearly  still,  and 
the  streets  bore  an  empty  Sunday  aspect. 

Here  is  a  picture  of  Memphis,  at  that  disastrous  time, 
drawn  by  a  German  tourist  who  seems  to  have  been  an  eye- 
witness of  the  scenes  which  he  describes.  It  is  from  Chapter 
VII.,  of  his  book,  just  published,  in  Leipzig,  "  Mississippi- 
Fahrten,  von  Ernst  von  Hesse-Wartegg  :"  — 

"  In  August  the  yellow-fever  had  reached  its  extremest  height. 
Daily,  hundreds  fell  a  sacrifice  to  the  terrible  epidemic.  The  city 
was  become  a  mighty  graveyard,  two-thirds  of  the  population  had 
deserted  the  place,  and  only  the  poor,  the  aged  and  the  sick, 
remained  behind,  a  sure  prey  for  the  insidious  enemy.  The  houses 
were  closed :  little  lamps  burned  in  front  of  many  —  a  sign  that  here 
death   had  entered.      Often,  several  lay  dead  in   a   single   house  ; 

21 


322 


SAD   SCENES. 


from  the  windows  hung  black  crape.  The  stores  were  shut  up,  for 
their  owners  were  gone  away  or  dead. 

"  Fearful  evil !  In  the  briefest  space  it  struck  down  and  swept 
away  even  the  most  vigorous  victim.  A  slight  indisposition,  then 
an  hour  of  fever,  then  the  hideous  delirium,  then  —  the  Yellow 
Death !  On  the  street  corners,  and  in  the  squares,  lay  sick  men, 
suddenly  overtaken  by  the  disease  ;  and  even  corpses,  distorted  and 
rigid.  Food  failed.  Meat  spoiled  in  a  few  hours  in  the  fetid 
and  pestiferous  air,  and  turned  black. 

"  Fearful  clamors  issue  from  many  houses  ;  then  after  a  season 
they  cease,  and  all  is  still :  noble,  self-sacrificing  men  come  with  the 


MEMPHIS  :     A   LANDING   STAGE. 


coffin,  nail  it 
up,  and  carry 
it  away,  to 
the  graveyard.  In 
the  night  stillness 
reigns.  Only  the 
physicians  and  the  hearses  hurry  through  the  streets  ;  and  out  of 
the  distance,  at  intervals,  comes  the  muffled  thunder  of  the  railway 
train,  which  with  the  speed  of  the  wind,  and  as  if  hunted  by  furies, 
flies  by  the  pest-ridden  city  without  halting." 


THE   SAMARITAN   CITY.  323 

But  there  is  life  enough  there  now.  The  population 
exceeds  forty  thousand  and  is  augmenting,  and  trade  is  in  a 
flourishing  condition.  We  drove  about  the  city  ;  visited  the 
park  and  the  sociable  horde  of  squirrels  there ;  saw  the 
fine  residences,  rose-clad  and  in  other  ways  enticing  to 
the  eye ;  and  got  a  good  breakfast  at  the  hotel. 

A  thriving  place  is  the  Good  Samaritan  City  of  the 
Mississippi :  has  a-  great  wholesale  jobbing  trade  ;  foundries, 
machine  shops ;  and  manufactories  of  wagons,  carriages, 
and  cotton-seed  oil ;  and  is  shortly  to  have  cotton  mills  and 
elevators. 

Her  cotton  receipts  reached  five  hundred  thousand  bales 
last  ye&r  —  an  increase  of  sixty  thousand  over  the  year 
before.  Out  from  her  healthy  commercial  heart  issue  five 
trunk  lines  of  railway  ;  and  a  sixth  is  being  added. 

This  is  a  very  different  Memphis  from  the  one  which  the 
vanished  and  unremembered  procession  of  foreign  tourists 
used  to  put  into  their  books  long  time  ago.  In  the  days  of 
the  now  forgotten  but  once  renowned  and  vigorously  hated 
Mrs.  Trollope,  Memphis  seems  to  have  consisted  mainly  of 
one  long  street  of  log-houses,  with  some  outlying  cabins 
sprinkled  around  rearward  toward  the  woods ;  and  now  and 
then  a  pig,  and  no  end  of  mud.  That  was  fifty-five  years 
ago.  She  stopped  at  the  hotel.  Plainly  it  was  not  the  one 
which  gave  us  our  breakfast.     She  says :  — 

"  The  table  was  laid  for  fifty  persons,  and  was  nearly  full. 
They  ate  in  perfect  silence,  and  with  such  astonishing  rapidity  that 
their  dinner  was  over  literally  before  ours  was  begun ;  the  only 
sounds  heard  were  those  produced  by  the  knives  and  forks,  with  the 
unceasing  chorus  of  coughing,  etc." 

"  Coughing,  etc."  The  "  etc.  "  stands  for  an  unpleasant 
word  there,  a  word  which  she  does  not  always  charitably 
cover  up,  but  sometimes  prints.  You  will  find  it  in  the 
following  description  of  a  steamboat  dinner  which  she  ate  in 
company  with  a  l©t  of  aristocratic  planters ;  wealthy,  well- 


324 


OLD-TIME   MANNERS. 


born,  ignorant  swells  they  were,  tinselled  with  the  usual 
harmless  military  and  judicial  titles  of  that  old  day  of  cheap 
shams  and  windy  pretence  : ' — 

"  The  total  want  of  all  the   usual  courtesies  of  the  table  ;  the 
voracious  rapidity  with  which  the  viands  were  seized  and  devoured  ; 


NATIVES    AT   DINNER. 


the  strange 
uncouth 
phrases  and 
pronunci- 
ation ;  the 
loathsome 
spitting, 
from  the  contamination  of  which  it  was 
absolutely  impossible  to  protect  our  dresses ;  the 
frightful  manner  of  feeding  with  their  knives,  till 
the  whole  blade  seemed  to  enter  into  the  mouth  ;  and  the  still  more 
frightful  manner  of  cleaning  the  teeth  afterward  with  a  pocket 
knife,  soon  forced  us  to  feel  that  we  were  not  surrounded  by  the 
generals,  colonels,  and  majors  of  the  old  world  ;  and  that  the  dinner 
hour  was  to  be  anything  rather  than  an  hour  of  enjoyment." 


CHAPTER  XXX. 


SKETCHES   BY  THE   WAY. 


T  T  was  a  big  river,  below  Memphis ;  banks  brimming  full, 
1    everywhere,   and   very   frequently  more    than  full,  the 
waters  pouring  out  over  the  land,  flooding  the  woods  and 
fields  for  miles  into  the  interior ;  and  in  places,  to  a  depth  of 
fifteen  feet ;  signs,  all  about,  of  men's  hard  work  gone  to  ruin, 
and  all  to  be 
done    over 
again,     with 
straitened 
means  and  a 
weakened 
courage.      A 
melancholy 
picture,    and 
a  continuous 
one  ;  —  hun- 
dreds of  miles 
of  it.     Some- 
times the  bea- 
con   lights 
stood   in  wa- 
ter  three  feet   deep,  in   the   edge   of  dense   forests   which 
extended   for  miles  without    farm,  wood-yard,  clearing,  or 
break   of   any  kind;   which  meant  that  the   keeper  of  the 
light  must  come  in  a  skiff  a  great  distance  to  discharge  his 
trust,  —  and  often  in  desperate  weather.    Yet  I  was  told  that 
the  work  is  faithfully  performed,  in  all  weathers ;  and  not 


A   LIGHT   KEEPER. 


326  THE   MIGRATORY   REGION. 

always  by  men,  sometimes  by  women,  if  the  man  is  sick  or 
absent.  The  Government  furnishes  oil,  and  pays  ten  or 
fifteen  dollars  a  month  for  the  lighting  and  tending.  A 
Government  boat  distributes  oil  and  pays  wages  once  a 
month. 

The  Ship  Island  region  was  as  woodsy  and  tenantless  as 
ever.  The  island  has  ceased  to  be  an  island  ;  has  joined 
itself  compactly  to  the  main  shore,  and  wagons  travel,  now, 
where  the  steamboats  used  to  navigate.  No  signs  left  of  the 
wreck  of  the  "  Pennsylvania."  Some  farmer  will  turn  up  her 
bones  with  his  plow  one  day,  no  doubt,  and  be  surprised. 

We  were  getting  down  now  into  the  migrating  negro 
region.  These  poor  people  could  never  travel  when  they 
were  slaves  ;  so  they  make  up  for  the  privation  now.  They 
stay  on  a  plantation  till  the  desire  to  travel  seizes  them  ;  then 
they  pack  up,  hail  a  steamboat,  and  clear  out.  Not  for  any 
particular  place ;  no,  nearly  any  place  will  answer ;  they  only 
want  to  be  moving.  The  amount  of  money  on  hand  will 
answer  the  rest  of  the  conundrum  for  them.  If  it  will  take 
them  fifty  miles,  very  well ;  let  it  be  fifty.  If  not,  a  shorter 
flight  will  do. 

During  a  couple  of  days,  we  frequently  answered  these 
hails.  Sometimes  there  was  a  group  of  high-water-stained, 
tumble-down  cabins,  populous  with  colored  folk,  and  no 
whites  visible  ;  with  grassless  patches  of  dry  ground  here  and 
there  ;  a  few  felled  trees,  with  skeleton  cattle,  mules,  and 
horses,  eating  the  leaves  and  gnawing  the  bark  —  no  other 
food  for  them  in  the  flood-wasted  land.  Sometimes  there 
was  a  single  lonely  landing-cabin  ;  near  it  the  colored  family 
that  had  hailed  us  ;  little  and  big,  old  and  young,  roosting  on 
the  scant  pile  of  household  goods  ;  these  consisting  of  a  rusty 
gun,  some  bedticks,  chests,  tinware,  stools,  a  crippled  looking- 
glass,  a  venerable  arm-chair,  and  six  or  eight  base-born  and 
spiritless  yellow  curs,  attached  to  the  family  by  strings. 
They  must  have  their  dogs  ;  can't  go  without  their  dogs. 
Yet  the  dogs  are  never  willing  ;  they  always  object ;  so,  one 


LOVE  ME,   LOVE   MY  DOG. 


327 


after  another,  in  ridiculous  procession,  they  are  dragged 
aboard  ;  all  four  feet  braced  and  sliding  along  the  stage,  head 
likely  to  be  pulled  off ;  but  the  tugger  marching  determinedly 
forward,  bending  to  his  work,  with  the  rope  over  his  shoulder 
for  better  purchase.  Sometimes  a  child  is  forgotten  and 
left  on  the  bank ;  but  never  a  dog. 

The  usual  river-gossip  going  on  in  the  pilot-house.     Island 
No.    63  —  an   island    with    a   lovely    "chute,"    or   passage, 

behind  it  in  the  former 
"^  times.  They  said  Jesse 
Jamieson,  in  the  "  Sky- 
lark," had  a  visiting  pilot 
with    him    one    trip  —  a 


NEGRO   TRAVELLERS. 


poor  old  broken-down,  superannuated  fellow  —  left  him  at 
the  wheel,  at  the  foot  of  63,  to  run  off  the  watch.  The 
ancient  mariner  went  up  through  the  chute,  and  down 
the   river   outside ;  and  up  the  chute   and  down  the   river 


328 


WENT   BY   A-SPARKLIN'. 


again  ;  and  yet  again  and  again  ;  and  handed  the  boat  over 
to  the  relieving  pilot,  at  the  end  of  three  hours  of  honest 
endeavor,  at  the  same  old  foot  of  the  island  where  he  had 
originally  taken  the  wheel !  A  darkey  on  shore  who  had 
observed  the  boat  go  by,  about  thirteen  times,  said,  "  'clar  to 
gracious,  I  would  n't  be  s'prised  if  dey  's  a  whole  line  o'  dem 
Sk'ylarks !  " 

Anecdote  illustrative  of  influence  of  reputation  in  the 
changing  of  opinion.  The  "  Eclipse  "  was  renowned  for  her 
swiftness.    One  day  she  passed  along ;  an  old  darkey  on  shore, 

absorbed  in  his 
own  matters,  did 
not  notice  what 
steamer  it  was. 
Presently  some 
one  asked  :  — 
"Any  boat  gone 


up 


?" 


j'^m 


"  Yes,  sah." 
"  Was  she  go- 
ing fast  ?  " 

"  Oh,    so-so  — 
loafin'  along." 

"  Now,  do  you 
know  what   boat 
that  was  ?  " 
"  No,  sah." 
"  Why,    uncle, 
that      was      the 
'  Eclipse.'  " 
Is  dat  so?     Well,  I  bet  it  was  —  cause  she  jes' 
went  by  here  a,-sparJcUn,.n'' 

Piece  of  history  illustrative  of  the  violent  style  of  some  of 
the  people  down  along  here.  During  the  early  weeks  of  high 
water,  A's  fence  rails  washed  down  on  B's  ground,  and  B's 
rails  washed  up  in  the  eddy  and  landed  on  A's  ground.    A  said, 


"any  boat  gone   up?" 


No! 


ENERGETIC   ARGUMENTS.  329 

"  Let  the  thing  remain  so ;  I  will  use  your  rails,  and  you 
use  mine."  But  B  objected  —  wouldn't  have  it  so.  One 
day,  A  came  down  on  B's  ground  to  get  his  rails.  B  said. 
*'  I  '11  kill  you ! "  and  proceeded  for  him  with  his  revolver. 
A  said,  "  I  'm  not  armed."  So  B,  who  wished  to  do  only 
what  was  right,  threw  down  his  revolver ;  then  pulled  a  knife, 
and  cut  A's  throat  all  around,  but  gave  his  principal  attention 
to  the  front,  and  so  failed  to  sever  the  jugular.  Struggling 
around,  A  managed  to  get  his  hands  on  the  discarded 
revolver,  and  shot  B  dead  with  it  —  and  recovered  from  his 
own  injuries. 

Further  gossip;  —  after  which,  everybody  went  below  to 
get  afternoon  coffee,  and  left  me  at  the  wheel,  alone.  Some- 
thing presently  reminded  me  of  our  last  hour  in  St.  Louis, 
part  of  which  I  spent  on  this  boat's  hurricane  deck,  aft.  I 
was  joined  there  by  a  stranger,  who  dropped  into  conversation 
with  me  —  a  brisk  young  fellow,  who  said  he  was  born  in  a 
town  in  the  interior  of  Wisconsin,  and  had  never  seen  a 
steamboat  until  a  week  before.  Also  said  that  on  the  way 
down  from  La  Crosse  he  had  inspected  and  examined  his  boat 
so  diligently  and  with  such  passionate  interest  that  he  had 
mastered  the  whole  thing  from  stem  to  rudder-blade.  Asked 
me  where  I  was  from.  I  answered,  New  England.  "  Oh,  a 
Yank !  "  said  he  ;  and  went  chatting  straight  along,  without 
waiting  for  assent  or  denial.  He  immediately  proposed  to 
take  me  all  over  the  boat  and  tell  me  the  names  of  her 
different  parts,  and  teach  me  their  uses.  Before  I  could 
enter  protest  or  excuse,  he  was  already  rattling  glibly  away 
at  his  benevolent  work  ;  and  when  I  perceived  that  he  was 
misnaming  the  things,  and  inhospitably  amusing  himself  at 
the  expense  of  an  innocent  stranger  from  a  far  country,  I 
held  my  peace,  and  let  him  have  his  way.  He  gave  me  a 
world  of  misinformation  ;  and  the  further  he  went,  the  wider 
his  imagination  expanded,  and  the  more  he  enjoyed  his  cruel 
work  of  deceit.  Sometimes,  after  palming  off  a  particularly 
fantastic  and  outrageous  lie  upon  me,  he    was  so  "  full  of 


330 


DISINTERESTED   HELP. 


laugh"  that  he  had  to  step  aside  for  a  minute,  upon  one 
pretext  or  another,  to  keep  me  from  suspecting.  I  staid 
faithfully  by  him  until  his  comedy  was  finished.  Then  he 
remarked  that  he  had  undertaken  to  "  learn  "  me  all  about  a 
steamboat,  and  had  done  it ;  but  that  if  he  had  overlooked 

anything,  just  ask 
him  and  he  would 
supply  the  lack. 
"  Anything  about 
this  boat  that  you 
don't  know  the 
name  of  or  the 
purpose  of,  you 
come  to  me  and  I  '11 
tell  you."  I  said 
I  would,  and  took 
my  departure ;  dis- 
appeared, and  ap- 
proached him  from 
another  quarter, 
whence  he  could 
not  see  me.  There 
he  sat,  all  alone, 
doubling  himself 
up  and  writhing 
this  way  and  that, 
in  the  throes  of  un- 
appeasable laugh- 
ter. He  must  have 
made  himself  sick ; 
for  he  was  not 
publicly  visible  af- 
Meantime,  the  episode  dropped 


A    WORLD   OF   MISINFORMATION 


terward  for  several  days, 
out  of  my  mind. 

The  thing  that  reminded  me  of  it  now,  when  I  was  alone 
at  the  wheel,  was  the  spectacle  of  this  young  fellow  standing 


INJURED  INNOCENCE.  331 

in  the  pilot-house  door,  with  the  knob  in  his  hand,  silently 
and  severely  inspecting  me.  I  don't  know  when  I  have  seen 
anybody  look  so  injured  as  he  did.  He  did  not  say  anything 
—  simply  stood  there  and  looked ;  reproachfully  looked  and 
pondered.  Finally  he  shut  the  door,  and  started  away ; 
halted  on  the  texas  a  minute ;  came  slowly  back  and  stood 
in  the  door  again,  with  that  grieved  look  in  his  face ;  gazed 
upon  me  a  while  in  meek  rebuke,  then  said :  — 

"  You  let  me  learn  you  all  about  a  steamboat,  did  n't  you?" 

"  Yes,"  I  confessed. 

"  Yes,  you  did  —  did  nH  you  ? " 

"  Yes." 

"  You  are  the  feller  that  —  that  —  " 

Language  failed.  Pause  —  impotent  struggle  for  further 
words  —  then  he  gave  it  up,  choked  out  a  deep,  strong  oath, 
and  departed  for  good.  Afterward  I  saw  him  several  times 
below  during  the  trip  ;  but  he  was  cold  —  would  not  look  at 
me.  Idiot,  if  he  had  not  been  in  such  a  sweat  to  play  his 
witless  practical  joke  upon  me,  in  the  beginning,  I  would  have 
persuaded  his  thoughts  into  some  other  direction,  and  saved 
him  from  committing  that  wanton  and  silly  impoliteness. 

1  had  myself  called  with  the  four  o'clock  watch,  mornings, 
for  one  cannot  see  too  many  summer  sunrises  on  the  Missis- 
sippi. They  are  enchanting.  First,  there  is  the  eloquence 
of  silence  ;  for  a  deep  hush  broods  everywhere.  Next,  there 
is  the  haunting  sense  of  loneliness,  isolation,  remoteness 
from  the  worry  and  bustle  of  the  world.  The  dawn  creeps 
in  stealthily ;  the  solid  walls  of  black  forest  soften  to  gray, 
and  vast  stretches  of  the  river  open  up  and  reveal  them- 
selves ;  the  water  is  glass-smooth,  gives  off  spectral  little 
wreaths  of  white  mist,  there  is  not  the  faintest  breath  of 
wind,  nor  stir  of  leaf ;  the  tranquillity  is  profound  and  infi- 
nitely satisfying.  Then  a  bird  pipes  up,  another  follows, 
and  soon  the  pipings  develop  into  a  jubilant  riot  of  music. 
You  see  none  of  the  birds ;  you  simply  move  through  an 
atmosphere  of  song  which  seems  to  sing  itself.     When  the 


332 


A   TRAGIC   ACCIDENT. 


light  has  become  a  little  stronger,  you  have  one  of  the  fairest 
and  softest  pictures  imaginable.  You  have  the  intense  green 
of  the  massed  and  crowded  foliage  near  by ;  you  see  it  paling 
shade  by  shade  in  front  of  you  ;  upon  the  next  projecting 
cape,  a  mile  off  or  more,  the  tint  has  lightened  to  the  tender 
young  green  of  spring ;  the  cape  beyond  that  one  has  almost 
lost  color,  and  the  furthest  one,  miles  away  under  the  hori- 
zon, sleeps  upon  the 
water  a  mere  dim 
vapor,  and  hardly  sep- 
arable from  the  sky 
above  it  and  about  it. 
And  all  this  stretch  of 
river  is  a  mirror,  and 
you  have  the  shadowy 
reflections  of  the  leaf- 
age and  the  curving 
shores  and  the  reced- 
ing capes  pictured  in 
it.  Well,  that  is  all 
beautiful ;  soft  and 
rich  and  beautiful ;  and 
when  the  sun  gets  well 
up,  and  distributes  a 
pink  flush  here  and  a 
powder  of  gold  yonder 
and  a  purple  haze  where  it  will  yield  the  best  effect,  you  grant 
that  you  have  seen  something  that  is  worth  remembering. 

We  had  the  Kentucky  Bend  country  in  the  early  morning 
— scene  of  a  strange  and  tragic  accident  in  the  old  times. 
Captain  Poe  had  a  small  stern-wheel  boat,  for  years  the  home 
of  himself  and  his  wife.  One  night  the  boat  struck  a  snag 
in  the  head  of  Kentucky  Bend,  and  sank  with  astonishing 
suddenness  ;  water  already  well  above  the  cabin  floor  when 
the  captain  got  aft.  So  he  cut  into  his  wife's  stateroom  from 
above  with  an  axe ;  she  was  asleep  in  the  upper  berth,  the 


A    FATAL   BLOW. 


ELABOBATE     STYLE. 


A  PHOTOGRAPHIC  ACCOUNT.  335 

roof  a  flimsier  one  than  was  supposed ;  the  first  blow  crashed 
down  through  the  rotten  boards  and  clove  her  skull. 

This  bend  is  all  filled  up  now  —  result  of  a  cut-off ;  and 
the  same  agent  has  taken  the  great  and  once  much-frequented 
Walnut  Bend,  and  set  it  away  back  in  a  solitude  far  from 
the  accustomed  track  of  passing  steamers. 

Helena  we  visited,  and  also  a  town  I  had  not  heard  of 
before,  it  being  of  recent  birth  —  Arkansas  City.  It  was 
born  of  a  railway ;  the  Little  Rock,  Mississippi  River  and 
Texas  Railroad  touches  the  river  there.  We  asked  a  pas- 
senger who  belonged  there  what  sort  of  a  place  it  was. 
"  Well,"  said  he,  after  considering,  and  with  the  air  of  one 
who  wishes  to  take  time  and  be  accurate,  "  It 's  a  hell  of  a 
place."  A  description  which  was  photographic  for  exactness. 
There  were  several  rows  and  clusters  of  shabby  frame-houses, 
and  a  supply  of  mud  sufficient  to  insure  the  town  against  a 
famine  in  that  article  for  a  hundred  years  ;  for  the  overflow 
had  but  lately  subsided.  There  were  stagnant  ponds  in  the 
streets,  here  and  there,  and  a  dozen  rude  scows  were  scat- 
tered about,  lying  aground  wherever  they  happened  to  have 
been  when  the  waters  drained  off  and  people  could  do 
their  visiting  and  shopping  on  foot  once  more.  Still,  it  is  a 
thriving  place,  with  a  rich  country  behind  it,  an  elevator 
in  front  of  it,  and  also  a  fine  big  mill  for  the  manufacture  of 
cotton-seed  oil.     I  had  never  seen  this  kind  of  a  mill  before. 

Cotton-seed  was  comparatively  valueless  in  my  time ;  but 
it  is  worth  $12  or  $13  a  ton  now,  and  none  of  it  is  thrown 
away.  The  oil  made  from  it  is  colorless,  tasteless,  and 
almost  if  not  entirely  odorless.  It  is  claimed  that  it  can, 
by  proper  manipulation,  be  made  to  resemble  and  perform 
the  office  of  any  and  all  oils,  and  be  produced  at  a  cheaper 
rate  than  the  cheapest  of  the  originals.  Sagacious  people 
shipped  it  to  Italy,  doctored  it,  labelled  it,  and  brought  it 
back  as  olive  oil.  This  trade  grew  to  be  so  formidable  that 
Italy  was  obliged  to  put  a  prohibitory  impost  upon  it  to  keep 
it  from  working  serious  injury  to  her  oil  industry. 


336  COLORED    STYLE. 

Helena  occupies  one  of  the  prettiest  situations  on  the 
Mississippi.  Her  perch  is  the  last,  the  southernmost  group 
of  hills  which  one  sees  on  that  side  of  the  river.  In  its 
normal  condition  it  is  a  pretty  town;  but  the  flood  (or 
possibly  the  seepage)  had  lately  been  ravaging  it ;  whole 
streets  of  houses  had  been  invaded  by  the  muddy  water,  and 
the  outsides  of  the  buildings  were  still  belted  with  a  broad 
stain  extending  upwards  from  the  foundations.  Stranded 
and  discarded  scows  lay  all  about ;  plank  sidewalks  on  stilts 
four  feet  high  were  still  standing ;  the  board  sidewalks  on 
the  ground  level  were  loose  and  ruinous,  —  a  couple  of  men 
trotting  along  them  could  make  a  blind  man  think  a  cavalry 
charge  was  coming ;  everywhere  the  mud  was  black  and 
deep,  and  in  many  places  malarious  pools  of  stagnant  water 
were  standing.  A  Mississippi  inundation  is  the  next  most 
wasting  and  desolating  infliction  to  a  fire. 

We  had  an  enjoyable  time  here,  on  this  sunny  Sunday : 
two  full  hours'  liberty  ashore  while  the  boat  discharged 
freight.  In  the  back  streets  but  few  white  people  were 
visible,  but  there  were  plenty  of  colored  folk — mainly  women 
and  girls  ;  and  almost  without  exception  upholstered  in  bright 
new  clothes  of  swell  and  elaborate  style  and  cut  —  a  glaring 
and  hilarious  contrast  to  the  mournful  mud  and  the  pensive 
puddles. 

Helena  is  the  second  town  in  Arkansas,  in  point  of  popu- 
lation —  which  is  placed  at  five  thousand.  The  country  about 
it  is  exceptionally  productive.  Helena  has  a  good  cotton 
trade  ;  handles  from  forty  to  sixty  thousand  bales  annually ; 
she  has  a  large  lumber  and  grain  commerce  ;  has  a  foundry, 
oil  mills,  machine  shops  and  wagon  factories  —  in  brief  has 
$1,000,000  invested  in  manufacturing  industries.  She  has 
two  railways,  and  is  the  commercial  centre  of  a  broad  and 
prosperous  region.  Her  gross  receipts  of  money,  annually, 
from  all  sources,  are  placed  by  the  New  Orleans  "  Times- 
Democrat  "  at  $4,000,000. 


CHAPTER   XXXI. 

A   THUMB-PRINT  AND   WHAT   CAME   OF  IT. 

WE  were  approaching  Napoleon,  Arkansas.  So  I  began 
to  think  about  my  errand  there.  Time,  noonday  ; 
and  bright  and  sunny.  This  was  bad  —  not  best,  anyway  ; 
for  mine  was  not  (preferably)  a  noonday  kind  of  errand. 
The  more  I  thought,  the  more  that  fact  pushed  itself  upon 


NAPOLEON   IN    1871. 


me  —  now  in  one  form,  now  in  another.  Finally,  it  took  the 
form  of  a  distinct  question  :  is  it  good  common  sense  to  do 
the  errand  in  daytime,  when,  by  a  little  sacrifice  of  comfort 
and  inclination,  you  can  have  night  for  it,  and  no  inquisitive 
eyes  around  ?  This  settled  it.  Plain  question  and  plain 
answer  make  the  shortest  road  out  of  most  perplexities. 

I  got  my  friends  Into  my  stateroom,  and  said  I  was  sorry 
to  create    annoyance   <and   disappointment,   but  that  upon 
reflection  it  reallv  seei?^d  best  that  we  put  our  luggage  ashore 
*  22 


338  A   GRISLY  PLACE. 

and  stop  over  at  Napoleon.  Their  disapproval  was  prompt 
and  loud ;  their  language  mutinous.  Their  main  argument 
was  one  which  has  always  been  the  first  to  come  to  the 
surface,  in  such  cases,  since  the  beginning  of  time :  "  But 
you  decided  and  agreed  to  stick  to  this  boat,  etc. ; "  as  if, 
having  determined  to  do  an  unwise  thing,  one  is  thereby 
bound  to  go  ahead  and  make  two  unwise  things  of  it,  by 
carrying  out  that  determination. 

I  tried  various  mollifying  tactics  upon  them,  with  reason- 
ably good  success  :  under  which  encouragement,  I  increased 
my  efforts;  and,  to  show  them  that /had  not  created  this 
annoying  errand,  and  was  in  no  way  to  blame  for  it,  I 
presently  drifted  into  its  history  —  substantially  as  follows  : 

Toward  the  end  of  last  year,  I  spent  a  few  months  in 
Munich,  Bavaria.  In  November  I  was  living  in  Fraulein 
Dahlweiner's  pension,  la,  Karlstrasse ;  but  my  working 
quarters  were  a  mile  from  there,  in  the  house  of  a  widow 
who  supported  herself  by  taking  lodgers.  She  and  her  two 
young  children  used  to  drop  in  every  morning  and  talk 
German  to  me  —  by  request.  One  day,  during  a  ramble 
about  the  city,  I  visited  one  of  the  two  establishments  where 
the  Government  keeps  and  watches  corpses  until  the  doctors 
decide  that  they  are  permanently  dead,  and  not  in  a  trance 
state.  It  was  a  grisly  place,  that  spacious  room.  There 
were  thirty-six  corpses  of  adults  in  sight,  stretched  on  their 
backs  on  slightly  slanted  boards,  in  three  long  rows  —  all 
of  them  with  wax-white,  rigid  faces,  and  all  of  them  wrapped 
in  white  shrouds.  Along  the  sides  of  the  room  were  deep 
alcoves,  like  bay  windows  ;  and  in  each  of  these  lay  several 
marble-visaged  babes,  utterly  hidden  and  buried  under  banks 
of  fresh  flowers,  all  but  their  faces  and  crossed  hands. 
Around  a  finger  of  each  of  these  fiftv  still  forms,  both 
great  and  small,  was  a  ring ;  and  from  the  ring  a  wire 
led  to  the  ceiling,  and  thence  to  a  \e\\  in  a  watch-room 
yonder,  where,  day  and  night,  a  watchman  sits  always  alert 
and  ready  to  spring  to  the  aid  of  an;/  of  that  pallid  company 


THE   DEATH  BELL.  339 

who,  waking  out  of  death,  shall  make  a  movement  —  for  any 
even  the  slightest  movement  will  twitch  the  wire  and  ring 
that  fearful  bell.  I  imagined  myself  a  death-sentinel 
drowsing  there  alone,  far  in  the  dragging  watches  of  some 
wailing,  gusty  night,  and  having  in  a  twinkling  all  my  body 
stricken  to  quivering  jelly  by  the  sudden  clamor  of  that 
awful  summons !  So  I  inquired  about  this  thing ;  asked 
what  resulted  usually  ?  if  the  watchman  died,  and  the 
restored  corpse  came  and  did  what  it  could  to  make  his  last 
moments  easy  ?  But  I  was  rebuked  for  trying  to  feed  an 
idle  and  frivolous  curiosity  in  so  solemn  and  so  mournful  a 
place ;  and  went  my  way  with  a  humbled  crest. 

Next  morning  I  was  telling  the  widow  my  adventure,  when 
she  exclaimed  — 

"  Come  with  me  !  I  have  a  lodger  who  shall  tell  you  all 
you  want  to  know.     He  has  been  a  night  watchman  there." 

He  was  a  living  man,  but  he  did  not  look  it.  He  was  abed, 
and  had  his  head  propped  high  on  pillows ;  his  face  was 
wasted  and  colorless,  his  deep-sunken  eyes  were  shut ;  his 
hand,  lying  on  his  breast,  was  talon-like,  it  was  so  bony  and 
long-fingered.  The  widow  began  her  introduction  of  me. 
The  man's  eyes  opened  slowly,  and  glittered  wickedly  out 
from  the  twilight  of  their  caverns  ;  he  frowned  a  black  frown  ; 
he  lifted  his  lean  hand  and  waved  us  peremptorily  away. 
But  the  widow  kept  straight  on,  till  she  had  got  out  the  fact 
that  I  was  a  stranger  and  an  American.  The  man's  face 
changed  at  once ;  brightened,  became  even  eager  —  and  the 
next  moment  he  and  I  were  alone  together. 

I  opened  up  in  cast-iron  German ;  he  responded  in  quite 
flexible  English ;  thereafter  we  gave  the  German  language 
a  permanent  rest. 

This  consumptive  and  I  became  good  friends.  I  visited 
him  every  day,  and  we  talked  about  everything.  At  least, 
about  everything  but  wives  and  children.  Let  anybody's 
wife  or  anybody's  child  be  mentioned,  and  three  things 
always  followed :   the  most  gracious  and  loving  and  tender 


340 


A   CONFESSION. 


light  glimmered  in  the  man's  eyes  for  a  moment ;  faded  out 
the  next,  and  in  its  place  came  that  deadly  look  which  had 
flamed  there  the  first  time  I  ever  saw  his  lids  unclose  • 
thirdly,  he  ceased  from  speech,  there  and  then  for  that  day  • 
lay  silent,  abstracted,  and  absorbed;  apparently  heard 
nothing  that  I  said ;    took  no  notice  of   my  good-byes,  and 


THE    MAN  S   EYES   OPENED    SLOWLY. 

plainly  did  not  know,  by  either  sight  or  hearing,  when  I  left 
the  room. 

When  I  had  been  this  Karl  Ritter's  daily  and  sole  inti- 
mate during  two  months,  he  one  day  said,  abruptly, — 

"  I  will  tell  you  my  story." 

A   DYING   MAN'S   CONFESSION. 

Then  he  went  on  as  follows  :  — 

I  have  never  given  up,  until  now.  But  now  I  have  given 
up.     I  am  going  to  die.      I  made  up  my  mind  last  night 


BOUND   AND   GAGGED.  341 

that  it  must  be,  and  very  soon,  too.  You  say  you  are  going 
to  revisit  your  river,  by  and  by,  when  you  find  opportunity. 
Very  well ;  that,  together  with  a  certain  strange  experience 
which  fell  to  my  lot  last  night,  determines  me  to  tell  you 
my  history  —  for  you  will  see  Napoleon,  Arkansas  ;  and  for 
my  sake  you  will  stop  there,  and  do  a  certain  thing  for  me 
—  a  thing  which  you  will  willingly  undertake  after  you  shall 
have  heard  my  narrative. 

Let  us  shorten  the  story  wherever  we  can,  for  it  will  need  it, 
being  long.  You  already  know  how  I  came  to  go  to  America, 
and  how  I  came  to  settle  in  that  lonely  region  in  the  South. 
But  you  do  not  know  that  I  had  a  wife.  My  wife  was  young, 
beautiful,  loving,  and  oh,  so  divinely  good  and  blameless  and 
gentle !  And  our  little  girl  was  her  mother  in  miniature. 
It  was  the  happiest  of  happy  households. 

One  night  —  it  was  toward  the  close  of  the  war  —  I  woke 
up  out  of  a  sodden  lethargy,  and  found  myself  bound  and 
gagged,  and  the  air  tainted  with  chloroform !  I  saw  two 
men  in  the  room,  and  one  was  saying  to  the  other,  in  a  hoarse 
whisper,  "  I  told  her  I  would,  if  she  made  a  noise,  and  as  for 
the  child  —  " 

The  other  man  interrupted  in  a  low,  half-crying  voice  — 

"  You  said  we  'd  only  gag  them  and  rob  them,  not  hurt 
them  ;  or  I  would  n't  have  come.'" 

"  Shut  up  your  whining ;  had  to  change  the  plan  when 
they  waked  up ;  you  done  all  you  could  to  protect  them,  now 
let  that  satisfy  you ;  come,  help  rummage." 

Both  men  were  masked,  and  wore  coarse,  ragged  "  nigger  " 
clothes ;  they  had  a  bull's-eye  lantern,  and  by  its  light  I 
noticed  that  the  gentler  robber  had  no  thumb  on  his  right 
hand.  They  rummaged  around  my  poor  cabin  for  a  moment ; 
the  head  bandit  then  said,  in  his  stage  whisper, — 

"It's  a  waste  of  time  —  he  shall  tell  where  it's  hid. 
Undo  his  gag,  and  revive  him  up." 

The  other  said  — 

"  All  right  —  provided  no  clubbing." 


342 


THE   BURGLARS   ALARMED. 


"  No  clubbing  it  is,  then  —  provided  he  keeps  still." 
They  approached  me ;   just  then  there  was  a  sound  out- 
side ;   a  sound  of  voices  and  trampling  hoofs ;   the  robbers 
held   their  breath    and   listened ;   the    sounds   came  slowly 
nearer  and  nearer ;  then  came  a  shout  — 

"  Hello,  the  house  !     Show  a  liffht,  we  want  water." 


THEY   RUMMAGED   THE    CABIN. 


"  The    captain's 
voice,   by    G  — !  " 
said  the  stage-whis- 
pering ruffian,  and 
both    robbers    fled 
by  the  way  of  the 
back  door,  shutting 
off  their  bull's-eye 
as  they  ran. 
The  strangers  shouted  several  times  more,  then  rode  by  — 
there  seemed  to  be  a  dozen  of  the  horses  —  and  I  heard 
nothing  more. 

I  struggled,  but  could  not  free  myself  from  my  bonds.  I 
tried  to  speak,  but  the  gag  was  effective  ;  I  could  not  make 
a  sound.  I  listened  for  my  wife's  voice  and  my  child's  — 
listened  long  and  intently,  but  no  sound  came  from  the  other 
end  of  the  room  where  their  bed  was.  This  silence  became 
more  and  more  awful,  more  and  more  ominous,  every  moment. 


A   SURE  CLUE.  343 

Could  you  have  endured  an  hour  of  it,  do  you  think  ?  Pity 
me,  then,  who  had  to  endure  three.  Three  hours?  —  it  was 
three  ages !  "Whenever  the  clock  struck,  it  seemed  as  if 
years  had  gone  by  since  I  had  heard  it  last.  All  this  time  I 
was  struggling  in  my  bonds  ;  and  at  last,  about  dawn,  I  got 
myself  free,  and  rose  up  and  stretched  my  stiff  limbs.  I 
was  able  to  distinguish  details  pretty  well.  The  floor  was 
littered  with  things  thrown  there  by  the  robbers  during  their 
search  for  my  savings.  The  first  object  that  caught  my  par- 
ticular attention  was  a  document  of  mine  which  I  had  seen 
the  rougher  of  the  two  ruffians  glance  at  and  then  cast  away. 
It  had  blood  on  it!  I  staggered  to  the  other  end  of  the 
room.  Oh,  poor  unoffending,  helpless  ones,  there  they  lay, 
their  troubles  ended,  mine  begun  ! 

Did  I  appeal  to  the  law — I?  Does  it  quench  the  pauper's 
thirst  if  the  King  drink  for  him  ?  Oh,  no,  no,  no  —  I  wanted 
no  impertinent  interference  of  the  law.  Laws  and  the  gal- 
lows could  not  pay  the  debt  that  was  owing  to  me !  Let  the 
laws  leave  the  matter  in  my  hands,  and  have  no  fears :  I 
would  find  the  debtor  and  collect  the  debt.  How  accomplish 
this,  do  you  say  ?  How  accomplish  it,  and  feel  so  sure  about 
it,  when  I  had  neither  seen  the  robbers'  faces,  nor  heard 
their  natural  voices,  nor  had  any  idea  who  they  might  be  ? 
Nevertheless,  I  was  sure  —  quite  sure,  quite  confident.  I 
had  a  clue  —  a  clue  which  you  would  not  have  valued  —  a 
clue  which  would  not  have  greatly  helped  even  a  detective, 
since  he  would  lack  the  secret  of  how  to  apply  it.  I  shall 
come  to  that,  presently — you  shall  see.  Let  us  go  on,  now, 
taking  things  in  their  due  order.  There  was  one  circum- 
stance which  gave  me  a  slant  in  a  definite  direction  to  begin 
with  :  Those  two  robbers  were  manifestly  soldiers  in  tramp 
disguise ;  and  not  new  to  military  service,  but  old  in  it  — 
regulars,  perhaps ;  they  did  not  acquire  their  soldierly  atti- 
tude, gestures,  carriage,  in  a  day,  nor  a  month,  nor  yet  in  a 
year.  So  I  thought,  but  said  nothing.  And  one  of  them 
had  said,  "  the  captain's  voice,  by  G — !"  —  the  one  whose 


344  FOLLOWING  THE   CLUE. 

life  I  would  have.  Two  miles  away,  several  regiments  were 
in  camp,  and  two  companies  of  U.  S.  cavalry.  When  I 
learned  that  Captain  Blakely,  of  Company  C  had  passed  our 
way,  that  night,  with  an  escort,  I  said  nothing,  but  in  that 
company  I  resolved  to  seek  my  man.  In  conversation  I  stu- 
diously and  persistently  described  the  robbers  as  tramps, 
camp  followers ;  and  among  this  class  the  people  made  use- 
less search,  none  suspecting  the  soldiers  but  me. 

Working  patiently,  by  night,  in  my  desolated  home,  I 
made  a  disguise  for  myself  out  of  various  odds  and  ends 
of  clothing;  in  the  nearest  village  I  bought  a  pair  of  blue 
goggles.  By  and  by,  when  the  military  camp  broke  up,  and 
Company  C  was  ordered  a  hundred  miles  north,  to  Napoleon, 
I  secreted  my  small  hoard  of  money  in  my  belt,  and  took 
my  departure  in  the  night.  When  Company  C  arrived  in 
Napoleon,  I  was  already  there.  Yes,  I  was  there,  with  a  new 
trade  —  fortune-teller.  Not  to  seem  partial,  I  made  friends 
and  told  fortunes  among  all  the  companies  garrisoned  there  ; 
but  I  gave  Company  C  the  great  bulk  of  my  attentions.  I 
made  myself  limitlessly  obliging  to  these  particular  men ; 
they  could  ask  me  no  favor,  put  upon  me  no  risk,  which  I 
would  decline.  I  became  the  willing  butt  of  their  jokes  ;  this 
perfected  my  popularity  ;  I  became  a  favorite. 

I  early  found  a  private  who  lacked  a  thumb  —  what  joy  it 
was  to  me !  And  when  I  found  that  he  alone,  of  all  the 
company,  had  lost  a  thumb,  my  last  misgiving  vanished ;  I 
was  sure  I  was  on  the  right  track.  This  man's  name  was 
Kruger,  a  German.  There  were  nine  Germans  in  the  com- 
pany. I  watched,  to  see  who  might  be  his  intimates  ;  but  he 
seemed  to  have  no  especial  intimates.  But  /  was  his  inti- 
mate ;  and  I  took  care  to  make  the  intimacy  grow.  Some- 
times I  so  hungered  for  my  revenge  that  I  could  hardly 
restrain  myself  from  going  on  my  knees  and  begging  him 
to  point  out  the  man  who  had  murdered  my  wife  and  child ; 
but  I  managed  to  bridle  my  tongue.  I  bided  my  time,  and 
went  on  telling  fortunes,  as  opportunity  offered. 


ON  THE  TRACK. 


345 


My  apparatus  was  simple :    a  little   red  paint   and  a  bit 
of  white  paper.     I  painted  the  ball  of   the  client's  thumb, 


took  a  print  of  it  on  the 

paper,   studied   it    that 

night,    and   revealed   his 

fortune  to  him  next  day. 

What  was  my  idea  in  this 

nonsense  ?      It  was  this  : 

When  I  was  a  youth,  I  knew  an 

old  Frenchman  who  had    been  a 

prison-keeper  for  thirty  years,  and 

he    told    me  that   there  was    one 

thing  about  a  person  which  never 

changed,  from  the   cradle  to  the  grave  —  the  lines  in  the 

ball  of  the  thumb ;  and  he  said  that  these  lines  were  never 

exactly  alike  in  the  thumbs  of  any  two  human  beings.     In 

these  days,  we  photograph  the  new  criminal,  and  hang  his 


ON    THE    RIGHT   TRACK. 


346 


THUMB-MARKS. 


THUMB-PRINTS. 


picture  in  the  Rogues'  Gallery  for  future  reference;  but 
that  Frenchman,  in  his  day,  used  to  take  a  print  of  the 
ball  of  a  new  prisoner's  thumb  and  put  that  away  for  future 
reference.  He  always  said  that  pictures  were  no  good  — 
future  disguises  could  make  them  useless ;  "  The  thumb 's 
the  only  sure  thing,"  said  he;  "you  can't  disguise  that." 
And  he  used  to  prove  his  theory,  too,  on  my  friends  and 
acquaintances;  it  always  succeeded. 

I   went    on    telling    fortunes. 
Every  night   I   shut   myself   in, 
all  alone,  and  studied  the  day's 
thumb-prints  with  a  magnifying- 
glass.      Imagine    the    devouring 
eagerness   with   which    I    pored 
over  those  mazy  red  spirals,  with 
that  document  by  my  side  which 
bore    the   right-hand    thumb-and 
finger-marks    of    that    unknown 
murderer,  printed  with  the  dear- 
est blood  —  to  me — that  was  ever  shed  on  this  earth!     And 
many  and  many  a  time  I  had  to  repeat  the  same  old  disap. 
pointed  remark,  "  will  they  never  correspond  !  " 

But  my  reward  came  at  last.  It  was  the  print  of  the 
thumb  of  the  forty-third  man  of  Company  C  whom  I  had 
experimented  on  —  private  Franz  Adler.  An  hour  before,  I 
did  not  know  the  murderer's  name,  or  voice,  or  figure,  or 
face,  or  nationality ;  but  now  I  knew  all  these  things  !  I 
believed  I  might  feel  sure;  the  Frenchman's  repeated  dem- 
onstrations being  so  good  a  warranty.  Still,  there  was  a  way 
to  make  sure.  I  had  an  impression  of  Kruger's  left  thumb. 
In  the  morning  I  took  him  aside  when  he  was  off  duty ;  and 
when  we  were  out  of  sight  and  hearing  of  witnesses,  I  said, 
impressively :  — 

"  A  part  of  your  fortune  is  so  grave,  that  I  thought  it 
would  be  better  for  you  if  I  did  not  tell  it  in  public.  You 
and  another  man,  whose  fortune  I  was  studying  last  night, 


CAUGHT  AT  LAST. 


347 


—  private  Adler,  —  have  been  murdering  a  woman  and  a 
child  !  You  are  being  dogged  :  within  five  days  both  of  you 
will  be  assassinated." 

He  dropped  on  his  knees,  frightened  out  of  his  wits  ;  and 
for  live  minutes  he  kept  pouring  out  the  same  set  of  words, 
like  a  demented  person,  and  in  the  same  half-crying  way 
which  was  one  of  my  memories  of  that  murderous  night  in 
my  cabin :  — 

"I  didn't  do  it;  upon  my  soul 
I  did  n't  do  it ;  and  I  tried  to  keep 
him  from    doing    it ;    I    did,   as 
God  is  my  wit- 
ness.   He  did 
it  alone." 

This  was 
all  I  wanted. 
And  I  tried 
to  get  rid  of 
the  fool ;  but 
no,  he  clung 
to  me,  implor- 
ing me  to  save 
him  from  the 
assassin.  He 
said,  — 

"I  have 
money  —  ten  thousand  dol- 
lars —  hid  away,  the  fruit 
of  loot  and  thievery  ;  save 
me  —  tell  me  what  to  do, 
and  you  shall  have  it,  every 
penny.     Two  thirds  of  it  is 

my  cousin  Adler's ;  but  you  can  take  it  all.  We  hid  it  when 
we  first  came  here.  But  I  hid  it  in  a  new  place  yesterday, 
and  have  not  told  him  —  shall  not  tell  him.  I  was  going  to 
desert,  and  get  away  with  it  all.     It  is  gold,  and  too  heavy. 


HE   DROPPED   ON    HIS    KNEES. 


348  THE  TRAGEDY  COMPLETED. 

to  carry  when  one  is  running  and  dodging ;  but  a  woman 
who  has  been  gone  over  the  river  two  days  to  prepare  my 
way  for  me  is  going  to  follow  me  with  it ;  and  if  I  got  no 
chance  to  describe  the  hiding-place  to  her  I  was  going  to  slip 
my  silver  watch  into  her  hand,  or  send  it  to  her,  and  she 
would  understand.  There  's  a  piece  of  paper  in  the  back  of 
the  case,  which  tells  it  all.  Here,  take  the  watch  —  tell  me 
what  to  do  !  " 

He  was  trying  to  press  his  watch  upon  me,  and  was  ex- 
posing the  paper  and  explaining  it  to  me,  when  Adler  ap- 
peared on  the  scene,  about  a  dozen  yards  away.  I  said  to 
poor  Kruger  :  — 

"  Put  up  your  watch,  I  don't  want  it.  You  shan't  come  to 
any  harm.  Go,  now ;  I  must  tell  Adler  his  fortune.  Pres- 
ently I  will  tell  you  how  to  escape  the  assassin ;  meantime 
shall  have  to  examine  your  thumb-mark  again.  Say  nothing 
to  Adler  about  this  thing  —  say  nothing  to  anybody." 

He  went  away  filled  with  fright  and  gratitude,  poor  devil. 
I  told  Adler  a  long  fortune,  —  purposely  so  long  that  I  could 
not  finish  it ;  promised  to  come  to  him  on  guard,  that  night, 
and  tell  him  the  really  important  part  of  it  —  the  tragical 
part  of  it,  I  said,  —  so  must  be  out  of  reach  of  eavesdroppers. 
They  always  kept  a  picket-watch  outside  the  town,  —  mere  dis- 
cipline and  ceremony,  —  no  occasion  for  it,  no  enemy  around. 

Toward  midnight  I  set  out,  equipped  with  the  counter- 
sign, and  picked  my  way  toward  the  lonely  region  where 
Adler  was  to  keep  his  watch.  It  was  so  dark  that  I  stumbled 
right  on  a  dim  figure  almost  before  I  could  get  out  a  pro- 
tecting word.  The  sentinel  hailed  and  I  answered,  both  at 
the  same  moment.  I  added,  "  It  's  only  me  —  the  fortune- 
teller." Then  I  slipped  to  the  poor  devil's  side,  and  without 
a  word  I  drove  my  dirk  into  his  heart !  Ja  wohl,  laughed  I, 
it  was  the  tragedy  part  of  his  fortune,  indeed !  As  he  fell 
from  his  horse,  he  clutched  at  me,  and  my  blue  goggles  re- 
mained in  his  hand  ;  and  away  plunged  the  beast  dragging 
him,  with  his  foot  in  the  stirrup. 


THE   SOLACE  FOR  FLIGHT. 


349 


I  fled  through  the  woods,  and  made  good  my  escape, 
leaving  the  accusing  goggles  behind  me  in  that  dead  man's 
hand. 


THE    TRAGEDY. 


This  was  fifteen  or  sixteen  years  ago.  Since  then  I  have 
wandered  aimlessly  about  the  earth,  sometimes  at  work, 
sometimes  idle ;  sometimes  with  money,  sometimes  with 
none ;  but  always  tired  of  life,  and  wishing  it  was  done,  for 
my  mission  here  was  finished,  with  the  act  of  that  night ; 
and  the  only  pleasure,  solace,  satisfaction  I  had,  in  all  those 
tedious  years,  was  in  the  daily  reflection,  "I  have  killed 
him!" 


350 


A    STRANGE   VOCATION. 


Four  years  ago,  my  health  began  to  fail.  I  had  wandered 
into  Munich,  in  my  purposeless  way.  Being  out  of  money, 
I  sought  work,  and  got  it ;  did  my  duty  faithfully  about  a 
year,  and  was  then  given  the  berth  of  night  watchman  yonder 
in  that  dead-house  which  you  visited  lately.  The  place  suited 
my  mood.     I  liked  it.     I  liked  being  with  the  dead  —  liked 

being  alone 
with  them. 
I  used  to  wan- 
der among 
those  rigid 
corpses,  and 
peer  into  their 
austere  faces, 
by  the  hour. 
The  later  the 
time,  the  more 
impressive  it 
was ;  I  pre- 
ferred the  late 
time.  Some- 
times I  turned 
the  lights  low: 
this  gave  per- 
spective, you 
see;  and  the 
in  the  morgue.  imagination 

could  play ;  al- 
ways, the  dim  receding  ranks  of  the  dead  inspired  one  with 
weird  and  fascinating  fancies.  Two  years  ago  —  I  had  been 
there  a  year  then  —  I  was  sitting  all  alone  in  the  watch-room, 
one  gusty  winter's  night,  chilled,  numb,  comfortless  ;  drowsing 
gradually  into  unconsciousness  ;  the  sobbing  of  the  wind  and 
the  slamming  of  distant  shutters  falling  fainter  and  fainter 
upon  my  dulling  ear  each  moment,  when  sharp  and  suddenly 
that  dead-bell  rang  out  a  blood-curdling  alarum  over  my 


THE  DEAD   SPEAKS.  351 

head !  The  shock  of  it  nearly  paralyzed  me  ;  for  it  was  the 
first  time  I  had  ever  heard  it. 

I  gathered  myself  together  and  flew  to  the  corpse-room. 
About  midway  down  the  outside  rank,  a  shrouded  figure  was 
sitting  upright,  wagging  its  head  slowly  from  one  side  to  the 
other  —  a  grisly  spectacle  !  Its  side  was  toward  me.  I 
hurried  to  it  and  peered  into  its  face.  Heavens,  it  was 
Adler ! 

Can  you  divine  what  my  first  thought  was  ?  Put  into 
words,  it  was  this  :  "  It  seems,  then,  you  escaped  me  once  : 
there  will  be  a  different  result  this  time  !  " 

Evidently  this  creature  was  suffering  unimaginable  terrors. 
Think  what  it  must  have  been  to  wake  up  in  the  midst  of 
that  voiceless  hush,  and  look  out  over  that  grim  congregation 
of  the  dead !  What  gratitude  shone  in  his  skinny  white  face 
when  he  saw  a  living  form  before  him  !  And  how  the  fer- 
vency of  this  mute  gratitude  was  augmented  when  his  eyes 
fell  upon  the  life-giving  cordials  which  I  carried  in  my  hands  ! 
Then  imagine  the  horror  which  came  into  this  pinched  face 
when  I  put  the  cordials  behind  me,  and  said  mockingly, — 

"  Speak  up,  Franz  Adler  —  call  upon  these  dead.  Doubt- 
less they  will  listen  and  have  pity  ;  but  here  there  is  none 
else  that  will." 

He  tried  to  speak,  but  that  part  of  the  shroud  which  bound 
his  jaws,  held  firm  and  would  not  let  him.  He  tried  to  lift 
imploring  hands,  but  they  were  crossed  upon  his  breast  and 
tied.     I  said  — 

"  Shout,  Franz  Adler  ;  make  the  sleepers  in  the  distant 
streets  hear  you  and  bring  help.  Shout  —  and  lose  no  time, 
for  there  is  little  to  lose.  What,  you  cannot  ?  That  is  a 
pity ;  but  it  is  no  matter  —  it  does  not  always  bring  help. 
When  you  and  your  cousin  murdered  a  helpless  woman  and 
child  in  a  cabin  in  Arkansas  —  my  wife,  it  was,  and  my  child  ! 
—  they  shrieked  for  help,  you  remember ;  but  it  did  no  good  ; 
you  remember  that  it  did  no  good,  is  it  not  so  ?  Your  teeth 
chatter  —  then  why  cannot  you  shout  ?     Loosen  the  bandages 


352  A   SHROUDED   VICTIM. 

with  your  hands  —  then  you  can.  Ah,  I  see  —  your  hands 
are  tied,  they  cannot  aid  you.  How  strangely  things  repeat 
themselves,  after  long  years ;  for  my  hands  were  tied,  that 
night,  you  remember  ?  Yes,  tied  much  as  yours  are  now  — 
how  odd  that  is.  I  could  not  pull  free.  It  did  not  occur 
to  you  to  untie  me  ;  it  does  not  occur  to  me  to  untie  you. 

Sli !  there  's  a  late  footstep.      It  is  coming  this  way. 

Hark,  how  near  it  is  !  One  can  count  the  footfalls  —  one  — 
two  —  three.  There  —  it  is  just  outside.  Now  is  the  time  ! 
Shout,  man,  shout !  —  it  is  the  one  sole  chance  between  you 
and  eternity!  Ah,  you  see  you  have  delayed  too  long  —  it 
is  gone  by.  There  — it  is  dying  out.  It  is  gone  !  Think  of 
it  —  reflect  upon  it  — ■  you  have  heard  a  human  footstep  for 
the  last  time.  How  curious  it  must  be,  to  listen  to  so  com- 
mon a  sound  as  that,  and  know  that  one  will  never  hear  the 
fellow  to  it  again." 

Oh,  my  friend,  the  agony  in  that  shrouded  face  was  ecstasy 
to  see  !  I  thought  of  a  new  torture,  and  applied  it  —  assist- 
ing myself  with  a  trifle  of  lying  invention  :  — 

"  That  poor  Kruger  tried  to  save  my  wife  and  child,  and  I 
did  him  a  grateful  good  turn  for  it  when  the  time  came.  I 
persuaded  him  to  rob  you  ;  and  I  and  a  woman  helped  him 
to  desert,  and  got  him  away  in  safety." 

A  look  as  of  surprise  and  triumph  shone  out  dimly  through 
the  anguish  in  my  victim's  face.  I  was  disturbed,  disquieted. 
I  said  — 

"  What,  then,  —  did  n't  he  escape  ?  " 

A  negative  shake  of  the  head. 

"  No  ?     What  happened,  then  ?  " 

The  satisfaction  in  the  shrouded  face  was  still  plainer. 
The  man  tried  to  mumble  out  some  words  —  could  not  suc- 
ceed ;  tried  to  express  something  with  his  obstructed  hands 
—  failed  ;  paused  a  moment,  then  feebly  tilted  his  head,  in  a 
meaning  way,  toward  the  corpse  that  lay  nearest  him. 

"Dead?"  I  asked.  "Failed  to  escape?  —  caught  in  the 
act  and  shot  ?  " 


STRANGE  SUGGESTIONS. 


353 


Negative  shake  of  the  head. 
«  How,  then  ? " 

Again  the  man  tried  to  do  something  with  his  hands.     I 
watched  closely,  but  could  not  guess  the  intent.     I  bent  over 


I   SAT   DOWN    BY   HIM. 


and  watched  still  more  intently.     He  had  twisted  a  thumb 
around  and  was  weakly  punching  at  his  breast  with  it. 

"  Ah  —  stabbed,  do  you  mean  ?  " 

Affirmative  nod,  accompanied  by  a  spectral  smile  of  such 
peculiar  devilishness,  that  it  struck  an  awakening  light 
through  my  dull  brain,  and  I  cried  — 

"  Did  /stab  him,  mistaking  him  for  you  ?  —  for  that  stroke 
was  meant  for  none  but  you." 

The  affirmative  nod  of  the  re-dying  rascal  was  as  joyous 
as  his  failing  strength  was  able  to  put  into  its  expression. 

23 


354  A  LONG  TIME  DYING. 

"  0,  miserable,  miserable  me,  to  slaughter  the  pitying  soul 
that  stood  a  friend  to  my  darlings  when  they  were  helpless, 
and  would  have  saved  them  if  he  could !  miserable,  oh,  mis- 
erable, miserable  me ! " 

I  fancied  I  heard  the  muffled  gurgle  of  a  mocking  laugh. 
I  took  my  face  out  of  my  hands,  and  saw  my  enemy  sinking 
back  upon  his  inclined  board. 

He  was  a  satisfactory  long  time  dying.  He  had  a  won- 
derful vitality,  an  astonishing  constitution.  Yes,  he  was  a 
pleasant  long  time  at  it.  I  got  a  chair  and  a  newspaper,  and 
sat  down  by  him  and  read.  Occasionally  I  took  a  sip  of 
brandy.  This  was  necessary,  on  account  of  the  cold.  But 
I  did  it  partly  because  I  saw,  that  along  at  first,  whenever  I 
reached  for  the  bottle,  he  thought  I  was  going  to  give  him 
some.  I  read  aloud :  mainly  imaginary  accounts  of  people 
snatched  from  the  grave's  threshold  and  restored  to  life  and 
vigor  by  a  few  spoonsful  of  liquor  and  a  warm  bath.  Yes, 
he  had  a  long,  hard  death  of  it  —  three  hours  and  six  min- 
utes, from  the  time  he  rang  his  bell. 

It  is  believed  that  in  all  these  eighteen  years  that  have 
elapsed  since  the  institution  of  the  corpse-watch,  no  shrouded 
occupant  of  the  Bavarian  dead-houses  has  ever  rung  its  bell. 
Well,  it  is  a  harmless  belief.     Let  it  stand  at  that. 

The  chill  of  that  death-room  had  penetrated  my  bones.  It 
revived  and  fastened  upon  me  the  disease  which  had  been 
afflicting  me,  but  which,  up  to  that  night,  had  been  steadily 
disappearing.  That  man  murdered  my  wife  and  my  child  ; 
and  in  three  days  hence  he  will  have  added  me  to  his  list. 
No  matter  —  God  !  how  delicious  the  memory  of  it !  —  I 
caught  him  escaping  from  his  grave,  and  thrust  him  back 
into  it ! 

After  that  night,  I  was  confined  to  my  bed  for  a  week ; 
but  as  soon  as  I  could  get  about,  I  went  to  the  dead-house 
books  and  got  the  number  of  the  house  which  Adler  had  died 
in.  A  wretched  lodging-house,  it  was.  It  was  my  idea  that 
he  would  naturally  have  gotten  hold  of  Kruger's  effects,  being 


TRACING  THE  WATCH.  355 

his  cousin ;  and  I  wanted  to  get  Kruger's  watch,  if  I  could. 
But  while  I  was  sick,  Adler's  things  had  been  sold  and 
scattered,  all  except  a  few  old  letters,  and  some  odds  and 
ends  of  no  value.  However,  through  those  letters,  I  traced 
out  a  son  of  Kruger's,  the  only  relative  he  left.  He  is  a  man 
of  thirty,  now,  a  shoemaker  by  trade,  and  living  at  No.  14 
Konigstrasse,  Mannheim — widower,  with  several  small  chil- 
dren. Without  explaining  to  him  why,  I  have  furnished  two 
thirds  of  his  support,  ever  since. 

Now,  as  to  that  watch  —  see  how  strangely  things  happen  ! 
I  traced  it  around  and  about  Germany  for  more  than  a  year, 
at  considerable  cost  in  money  and  vexation ;  and  at  last  I 
got  it.  Got  it,  and  was  unspeakably  glad ;  opened  it,  and 
found  nothing  in  it !  Why,  I  might  have  known  that  that 
bit  of  paper  was  not  going  to  stay  there  all  this  time.  Of 
course  I  gave  up  that  ten  thousand  dollars  then ;  gave  it  up, 
and  dropped  it  out  of  my  mind  :  and  most  sorrowfully,  for  I 
had  wanted  it  for  Kruger's  son. 

Last  night,  when  I  consented  at  last  that  I  must  die,  I 
began  to  make  ready.  I  proceeded  to  burn  all  useless  papers  ; 
and  sure  enough,  from  a  batch  of  Adler's,  not  previously  ex- 
amined with  thoroughness,  out  dropped  that  long-desired 
scrap  !  I  recognized  it  in  a  moment.  Here  it  is  —  I  will 
translate  it : 

"  Brick  livery  stable,  stone  foundation,  middle  of  town,  corner  of 
Orleans  and  Market.  Corner  toward  Court-house.  Third  stone, 
fourth  row.     Stick  notice  there,  saying  how  many  are  to  come." 

There  —  take  it,  and  preserve  it.  Kruger  explained  that 
that  stone  was  removable  ;  and  that  it  was  in  the  north  wall 
of  the  foundation,  fourth  row  from  the  top,  and  third  stone 
from  the  west.  The  money  is  secreted  behind  it.  He  said 
the  closing  sentence  was  a  blind,  to  mislead  in  case  the  paper 
should  fall  into  wrong  hands.  It  probably  performed  that 
office  for  Adler. 

Now  I  want  to  beg  that  when  you  make  your  intended 


356 


A   SACRED   ERRAND. 


journey  down  the  river,  you  will  hunt  out  that  hidden  money, 
and  send  it  to  Adam  Kruger,  care  of  the  Mannheim  address 
which  I  have  mentioned.  It  will  make  a  rich  man  of  him, 
and  I  shall  sleep  the  sounder  in  my  grave  for  knowing  that 
I  have  done  what  I  could  for  the  son  of  the  man  who  tried 
to  save  my  wife  and  child  —  albeit  my  hand  ignorantly  struck 
him  down,  whereas  the  impulse  of  my  heart  would  have  been 
to  shield  and  serve  him. 


CHAPTER  XXXII. 

THE  DISPOSAL  OF  A  BONANZA. 

SUCH  was  Ritter's  narrative,"  said  I  to  my  two  friends. 
There  was  a  profound  and  impressive  silence,  which 
lasted  a  considerable  time  ;  then  both  men  broke  into  a  fu- 
sillade of  excited  and  admiring  ejaculations  over  the  strange 
incidents  of  the  tale  ;  and  this,  along  with  a  rattling  fire 
of  questions,  was  kept  up  until  all  hands  were  about  out  of 
breath.  Then  my  friends  began  to  cool  down,  and  draw  off, 
under  shelter  of  occasional  volleys,  into  silence  and  abysmal 
reverie.  For  ten  minutes  now,  there  was  stillness.  Then 
Rogers  said  dreamily  :  — 

"  Ten  thousand  dollars." 

Adding,  after  a  considerable  pause,  — 

"  Ten  thousand.     It  is  a  heap  of  money." 

Presently  the  poet  inquired,  — 

"  Are  you  going  to  send  it  to  him  right  away  ?  " 

"  Yes,"  I  said.     "  It  is  a  queer  question." 

No  reply.     After  a  little,  Rogers  asked,  hesitatingly  : 

"  All  of  it  ?  —    That  is  —     I  mean  —  " 

"  Certainly,  all  of  it." 

I  was  going  to  say  more,  but  stopped,  —  was  stopped  by  a 
train  of  thought  which  started  up  in  me.  Thompson  spoke, 
but  my  mind  was  absent  and  I  did  not  catch  what  he  said. 
But  I  heard  Rogers  answer,  — 

"  Yes,  it  seems  so  to  me.  It  ought  to  be  quite  sufficient ; 
for  I  don't  see  that  he  has  done  anything." 

Presently  the  poet  said,  — 

"  When  you  come  to  look  at  it,  it  is  more  than  sufficient. 


358 


DISCUSSION  BEGINS. 


Just  look  at  it  —  five  thousand  dollars  !  Why,  he  could  n't 
spend  it  in  a  lifetime !  And  it  would  injure  him,  too  ;  per- 
haps ruin  him  —  you  want  to  look  at  that.  In  a  little  while  he 
would  throw  his  last  away,  shut  up  his  shop,  maybe  take  to 


WE   BEGAN   TO   COOL  OFF. 


drinking,  maltreat  his  motherless  children,  drift  into  other 
evil  courses,  go  steadily  from  bad  to  worse  —  " 

"  Yes,  that 's  it,"  interrupted  Rogers,  fervently,  "  I  've  seen 
it  a  hundred  times  —  yes,  more  than  a  hundred.  You  put 
money  into  the  hands  of  a  man  like  that,  if  you  want  to  de- 
stroy him,  that's  all ;  just  put  money  into  his  hands,  it's  all 


POVERTY  IS   BLISS. 


359 


you  've  got  to  do  ;  and  if  it  don't  pull  him  down,  and  take  all 
the  usefulness  out  of  him,  and  all  the  self-respect  and  every- 
thing, then  I  don't  know  human  nature  —  ain't  that  so,  Thomp- 
son ?  And  even  if  we  were  to  give  him  a  third  of  it ;  why, 
in  less  than  six  months  —  " 

"  Less  than  six  weeks,  you'd  better  say  !  "  said  I,  warming 
up  and  breaking  in.     "  Unless  he  had  that  three  thousand 

dollars  in  safe 
hands  where  he 
couldn't  touch  it, 
he  would  no  more 
last  you  six  weeks 
than  —  " 

"  Of  course  he 
would  n't,"  said 
Thompson  ;  "  I  've 
edited  books  for 
that  kind  of  peo- 
ple ;  and  the  mo- 
ment they  get  their 
hands  on  the  roy- 
alty—  maybe  it's 
three  thousand, 
maybe  it 's  two 
thousand — " 

"  What  business 
has  that  shoema- 
ker with  two  thousand  dollars,  I  should 
like  to  know  ?  "  broke  in  Eogers,  earnestly.  "  A 
man  perhaps  perfectly  contented  now,  there  in  Mann- 
heim, surrounded  by  his  own  class,  eating  his  bread  with  the 
appetite  which  laborious  industry  alone  can  give,  enjoying  his 
humble  life,  honest,  upright,  pure  in  heart ;  and  blest  !  —  yes, 
I  say  blest !  blest  above  all  the  myriads  that  go  in  silk  attire 
and  walk  the  empty  artificial  round  of  social  folly  —  but 
just  you   put  that  temptation  before  him   once !   just  you 


AIN  T   THAT   SO, 
THOMPSON  ?  " 


360 


RICHES   ARE   RUIN. 


lay   fifteen   hundred   dollars   before   a   man  like   that,  and 
say  —  " 

"  Fifteen  hundred  devils !"  cried  I,  "jive  hundred  would  rot 
his  principles,  paralyze  his  industry,  drag  him  to  the  rumshop, 
thence  to  the  gutter,  thence  to  the  almshouse,  thence  to  —  " 

"  Why  put  upon  ourselves  this  crime,  gentlemen?"  inter- 
rupted the  poet  earnestly  and  appealingly.  "He  is  happy 
where  he  is,  and  as  he  is.     Every  sentiment  of  honor,  every 

sentiment  of  charity, 
every  sentiment  of  high 
and  sacred  benevolence 
warns  us,  beseeches  us, 
commands  us  to  leave 
him  undisturbed.  That 
is  real  friendship,  that 
is  true  friendship.  We 
could  follow  other 
courses  that  would  be 
more  showy ;  but  none 
that  would  be  so  truly 
kind  and  wise,  depend 
upon  it." 

After  some  further 
talk,  it  became  evident 
that  each  of  us,  down 
in  his  heart,  felt  some  misgivings  over  this  settlement  of 
the  matter.  It  was  manifest  that  we  all  felt  that  we  ought 
to  send  the  poor  shoemaker  something.  There  was  long  and 
thoughtful  discussion  of  this  point ;  and  we  finally  decided 
to  send  him  a  chromo. 

Well,  now  that  everything  seemed  to  be  arranged  satis- 
factorily to  everybody  concerned,  a  new  trouble  broke  out : 
it  transpired  that  these  two  men  were  expecting  to  share 
equally  in  the  money  with  me.  That  was  not  my  idea.  I 
said  that  if  they  got  half  of  it  between  them  they  might  con- 
sider themselves  lucky.     Rogers  said  :  — 


HE   IS   HAPPY   WHERE   HE   IS. 


CLIMAX  OF   THE  DISCUSSION. 


361 


"  Who  would  have  had  any  if  it  had  n't  been  for  me  ?  I 
flung  out  the  first  hint  —  but  for  that  it  would  all  have  gone 
to  the  shoemaker." 

Thompson  said  that  he  was  thinking  of  the  thing  himself 
at  the  very  moment  that  Rogers  had  originally  spoken. 

I  retorted  that  the  idea  would  have  occurred  to  me  plenty 
soon  enough,  and  without  anybody's  help.  I  was  slow  about 
thinking,  maybe,  but  I  was  sure. 

This  matter  warmed  up  into  a  quarrel ;  then  into  a  fight ; 
and  each  man  got  pretty  badly  battered.     As  soon  as  I  had 


WARMED   TJP   INTO  A  QUARREL. 


got  myself  mended  up  after  a  fashion,  I  ascended  to  the  hur- 
ricane deck  in  a  pretty  sour  humor.  I  found  Captain  McCord 
there,  and  said,  as  pleasantly  as  my  humor  would  permit :  — 
"  I  have  come  to  say  good-bye,  captain.  I  wish  to  go  ashore 
at  Napoleon." 


362  WHEKE   IS   NAPOLEON? 

"  Go  ashore  where  ?  " 

"  Napoleon." 

The  captain  laughed  ;  but  seeing  that  I  was  not  in  a  jovial 
mood,  stopped  that  and  said, — 

"  But  are  you  serious  ? " 

"  Serious  ?     I  certainly  am." 

The  captain  glanced  up  at  the  pilot-house  and  said,  — 

"  He  wants  to  get  off  at  Napoleon ! " 

"  Napoleon  ?  " 

"  That 's  what  he  says." 

"  Great  Caesar's  ghost !  " 

Uncle  Mumford  approached  along  the  deck.  The  captain 
said,  — 

"  Uncle,  here 's  a  friend  of  yours  wants  to  get  off  at  Napo- 
leon! " 

"  Well,  by  — ! " 

I  said, — 

"  Come,  what  is  all  this  about  ?  Can't  a  man  go  ashore  at 
Napoleon  if  he  wants  to  ?  " 

"  Why,  hang  it,  don't  you  know  ?  There  is  n't  any  Napoleon 
any  more.  Has  n't  been  for  years  and  years.  The  Arkansas 
River  burst  through  it,  tore  it  all  to  rags,  and  emptied  it  into 
the  Mississippi !  " 

"  Carried  the  whole,  town  away  ? — banks,  churches,  jails, 
newspaper-offices,  court-house,  theatre,  fire  department,  livery 
stable,  —  everything  f  " 

"  Everything.  Just  a  fifteen-minute  job,  or  such  a  matter. 
Did  n't  leave  hide  nor  hair,  shred  nor  shingle  of  it,  except 
the  fag-end  of  a  shanty  and  one  brick  chimney.  This  boat  is 
paddling  along  right  now,  where  the  dead-centre  of  that 
town  used  to  be  ;  yonder  is  the  brick  chimney,  —  all  that 's 
left  of  Napoleon.  These  dense  woods  on  the  right  used 
to  be  a  mile  back  of  the  town.  Take  a  look  behind  you  — 
up-stream  —  now  you  begin  to  recognize  this  country,  don't 
you  ?" 

"  Yes,  I  do  recognize  it  now.     It  is  the  most  wonderful 


GONE  TO   FIND   THE   WOODBINE. 


363 


thing  I  ever  heard  of  ;  bj  a  long  shot  the  most  wonderful  — 
and  unexpected." 

Mr.  Thompson  and  Mr.  Rogers  had  arrived,  meantime,  with 
satchels  and  umbrellas,  and  had  silently  listened  to  the  cap- 
tain's news.  Thompson  put  a  half-dollar  in  my  hand  and 
said  softly  :  — 

"  For  my  share  of  the  chromo." 

Rogers  followed  suit. 


^•S4b 


Yes,  it  was  an  astonishing  thing  to 
see  the  Mississippi  rolling  between 
unpeopled  shores  and  straight  over 
the  spot  where  I  used  to  see  a  good  big  self-complacent  town 
twenty  years  ago.  Town  that  was  county-seat  of  a  great  and 
important  county ;  town  with  a  big  United  States  marine 
hospital ;  town  of  innumerable  fights  —  an  inquest  every  day ; 
town  where  I  had  used  to  know  the  prettiest  girl,  and  the 
most  accomplished  in  the  whole  Mississippi  Valley ;  town 
where  we  were  handed  the  first  printed  news  of  the  "  Penn- 
sylvania's" mournful  disaster  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago ;  a 
town  no  more  —  swallowed  up,  vanished,  gone  to  feed  the 
fishes  ;  nothing  left  but  a  fragment  of  a  shanty  and  a  crum- 
bling brick  chimney ! 


CHAPTER  XXXIII. 

REFRESHMENTS  AND  ETHICS. 

IN  regard  to  Island  74,  which  is  situated  not  far  from  the 
former  Napoleon,  a  freak  of  the  river  here  has  sorely 
perplexed  the  laws  of  men  and  made  them  a  vanity  and  a  jest. 
When  the  State  of  Arkansas  was  chartered,  she  controlled 
"  to  the  centre  of  the  river  "  —  a  most  unstable  line.  The 
State  of  Mississippi  claimed  "  to  the  channel "  —  another 
shifty  and  unstable  line.  No.  74  belonged  to  Arkansas. 
By  and  by  a  cut-off  threw  this  big  island  out  of  Arkansas, 
and  yet  not  within  Mississippi.  "  Middle  of  the  river  "  on 
one  side  of  it,  "  channel "  on  the  other.  That  is  as  I  under- 
stand the  problem.  Whether  I  have  got  the  details  right  or 
wrong,  this  fact  remains  :  that  here  is  this  big  and  exceed- 
ingly valuable  island  of  four  thousand  acres,  thrust  out  in 
the  cold,  and  belonging  to  neither  the  one  State  nor  the 
other ;  paying  taxes  to  neither,  owing  allegiance  to  neither. 
One  man  owns  the  whole  island,  and  of  right  is  "  the  man 
without  a  country." 

Island  92  belongs  to  Arkansas.  The  river  moved  it  over 
and  joined  it  to  Mississippi.  A  chap  established  a  whiskey 
shop  there,  without  a  Mississippi  license,  and  enriched 
himself  upon  Mississippi  custom  under  Arkansas  protection 
(where  no  license  was  in  those  days  required). 

We  glided  steadily  clown  the  river  in  the  usual  privacy  — 
steamboat  or  other  moving  thing  seldom  seen.  Scenery  as 
always :  stretch  upon  stretch  of  almost  unbroken  forest,  on 
both  sides  of  the  river  ;  soundless  solitude.     Here  and  there 


TRANSITION  STATES. 


SQif 


a  cabin  or  two,  standing  in  small  openings  on  the  gray  and 
grassless  banks  —  cabins  which  had  formerly  stood  a  quarter 
or  half-mile  farther  to  the  front,  and  gradually  been  pulled 
farther  and  farther  back  as  the  shores  caved  in.  As  at  Pil- 
cher's  Point,  for  instance,  where  the  cabins  had  been  moved 
back  three  hundred  yards  in  three  months,  so  we  were  told ; 
but  the  caving  banks  had  already  caught  up  with  them,  and 
they  were  being  conveyed  rearward  once  more. 

Napoleon  had  but  small  opinion  of  Greenville,  Mississippi, 
in, the  old  times ;  but  behold,  Napoleon  is  gone  to  the  cat- 


CAVING   BANKS. 


fishes,  and  here  is  Greenville  full  of  life  and  activity,  and 
making  a  considerable  flourish  in  the  Valley ;  having  three 
thousand  inhabitants,  it  is  said,  and  doing  a  gross  trade  of 
$2,500,000  annually.     A  growing  town. 

There  was  much  talk  on  the  boat  about  the  Calhoun  Land 
Company,  an  enterprise  which  is  expected  to  work  whole- 


366  SYNDICATES   AND   SETTLEMENTS. 

some  results.  Colonel  Calhoun,  a  grandson  of  the  states- 
man, went  to  Boston  and  formed  a  syndicate  which  pur- 
chased a  large  tract  of  land  on  the  river,  in  Chicot  County, 
Arkansas, —  some  ten  thousand  acres  —  for  cotton-growing. 
The  purpose  is  to  work  on  a  cash  basis :  buy  at  first  hands, 
and  handle  their  own  product ;  supply  their  negro  laborers 
with  provisions  and  necessaries  at  a  trifling  profit,  say  8  or 
10  per  cent ;  furnish  them  comfortable  quarters,  etc.,  and 
encourage  them  to  save  money  and  remain  on  the  place. 
If  this  proves  a  financial  success,  as  seems  quite  certain, 
they  propose  to  establish  a  banking-house  in  Greenville,  and 
lend  money  at  an  unburdensome  rate  of  interest  —  6  per 
cent  is  spoken  of. 

The  trouble  heretofore  has  been  —  I  am  quoting  remarks 
of  planters  and  steamboatmen  —  that  the  planters,  although 
owning  the  land,  were  without  cash  capital ;  had  to  hypothe- 
cate both  land  and  crop  to  carry  on  the  business.  Conse- 
quently, the  commission  dealer  who  furnishes  the  money 
takes  some  risk  and  demands  big  interest  —  usually  10  per 
cent,  and  2J  per  cent  for  negotiating  the  loan.  The  planter 
has  also  to  buy  his  supplies  through  the  same  dealer,  paying 
commissions  and  profits.  Then  when  he  ships  his  crop,  the 
dealer  adds  his  commissions,  insurance,  etc.  So,  taking  it 
by  and  large,  and  first  and  last,  the  dealer's  share  of  that 
crop  is  about  25  per  cent.1 

A  cotton-planter's  estimate  of  the  average  margin  of  profit 
on  planting,  in  his  section :  One  man  and  mule  will  raise  ten 
acres  of  cotton,  giving  ten  bales  cotton,  worth,  say,  $500 ; 
cost  of  producing,  say  8350  ;  net  profit,  $150,  or  $15  per 
acre.  There  is  also  a  profit  now  from  the  cotton-seed,  which 
formerly  had  little  value  —  none  where  much  transportation 

1  "  But  what  can  the  State  do  where  the  people  are  under  subjection  to 
rates  of  interest  ranging  from  18  to  30  per  cent,  and  are  also  under  the  neces- 
sity of  purchasing  their  crops  in  advance  even  of  planting,  at  these  rates,  for 
the  privilege  of  purchasing  all  their  supplies  at  100  per  cent  profit  "i "  — Edward 
Atkinson. 


COMMISSION  DEALERS. 


36T 


was  necessary.  In  sixteen  hundred  pounds  crude  cotton, 
four  hundred  are  lint,  worth,  say,  ten  cents  a  pound ;  and 
twelve  hundred  pounds  of  seed,  worth  $12  or  §13  per  ton. 
Maybe  in  future  even  the  stems  will  not  be  thrown  away. 
Mr.  Edward  Atkinson  says  that  for  each  bale  of  cotton  there 
are  fifteen 
hundred 
pounds  of 
stems,  and 
that  these 
are  ve  ry 
rich  in  phos- 
phate of  lime 
and  potash ; 
that  when 
ground  and 
mixed  with 
ensilage  or 
cotton  -  seed 
meal  (which 
is  too  rich 
for  use  as 
fodder  in 
large  quan- 
tities), the  stem  mixture  makes  a  superior  food,  rich  in  all 
the  elements  needed  for  the  production  of  milk,  meat, 
and  bone.  Heretofore  the  stems  have  been  considered  a 
nuisance. 

Complaint  is  made  that  the  planter  remains  grouty  toward 
the  former  slave,  since  the  war ;  will  have  nothing  but  a 
chill  business  relation  with  him,  no  sentiment  permitted  to 
intrude  ;  will  not  keep  a  "  store "  himself,  and  supply  the 
negro's  wants  and  thus  protect  the  negro's  pocket  and  make 
him  able  and  willing  to  stay  on  the  place  and  an  advantage 
to  him  to  do  it,  but  lets  that  privilege  to  some  thrifty  Israel- 
ite, who  encourages  the  thoughtless  negro  and  wife  to  buy 


THE    COMMISSION   DEALER. 


rVft^W 


368 


ISRAELITES  AND  NEGROES. 


all  sorts  of  things  which  they  could  do  without,  —  buy  on 
credit,  at  big  prices,  month  after  month,  credit  based  on  the 
negro's  share  of  the  growing  crop ;  and  at  the  end  of  the 
season,  the  negro's  share  belongs  to  the  Israelite,  the  negro 
is  in  debt  besides,  is  discouraged,  dissatisfied,  restless,  and 


both  he  and 

the    planter 

are     injured ; 

for  he  will  take 

steamboat  and 

migrate,  and  the  THe  iseaelite. 

planter  must  get 

a  stranger  in  his  place  who  does  not  know  him,  does  not 

care  for  him,  will  fatten  the  Israelite  a  season,  and  follow 

his  predecessor  per  steamboat. 

It  is  hoped  that  the  Calhoun  Company  will  show,  by  its 
humane  and  protective  treatment  of  its  laborers,  that  its 
method  is  the  most  profitable  for  both  planter  and  negro ; 
and  it  is  believed  that  a  general  adoption  of  that  method  will 
then  follow. 


THE  BARKEEPER   TESTIFIES. 


369 


And  where  so  many  are  saying  their  say,  shall  not  the  bar- 
keeper testify?     He  is  thoughtful,  observant,  never  drinks; 

endeavors  to  earn 
his    salary,    and 
would  earn  it  if 
there   were   cus- 
tom enough.    He 
says   the   people 
along   here    in 
Mississippi    and 
Louisiana     will 
send  up  the  river 
to  buy  vegetables 
rather  than  raise  them,  and  they 
will  come  aboard  at  the  landings 
and  buy  fruits  of  the  barkeeper. 
Thinks   they  "  don't   know   any- 
thing but  cotton ; "  believes  they 
don't   know  how  to  raise  vegeta- 
and  fruit  — "  at  least   the 
most  of  them."     Says  "  a  nigger 
will  go  to  H  for  a  watermelon" 
the  barkeeper.  ("H"  is  all  I  find  in  the  steno- 

grapher's report — means  Halifax 
probably,  though  that  seems  a  good  way  to  go  for  a  water- 
melon). Barkeeper  buys  watermelons  for  five  cents  up  the 
river,  brings  them  down  and  sells  them  for  fifty.  "  Why 
does  he  mix  such  elaborate  and  picturesque  drinks  for  the 
nigger  hands  on  the  boat  ? "  Because  they  won't  have  any 
other.  "  They  want  a  big  drink ;  don't  make  any  differ- 
ence what  you  make  it  of,  they  want  the  worth  of  their 
money.  You  give  a  nigger  a  plain  gill  of  half-a-dollar  brandy 
for  five  cents  —  will  he  touch  it  ?  No.  Ain't  size  enough  to 
it.  But  you  put  up  a  pint  of  all  kinds  of  worthless  rubbish, 
and  heave  in  some  red  stuff  to  make  it  beautiful  —  red 's  the 
main  thing — and  he  would  n't  put  down  that  glass  to  go  to 

24 


370 


BIG  DRINKS   WANTED. 


a  circus."    All  the  bars  on  this  Anchor  Line  are  rented  and 
owned  by  one  firm.     They  furnish  the  liquors  from  their 

own    establish- 
ment, and  hire  the 
barkeepers    "on 
salary."      Good 
liquors?     Yes,  on 
some   of    the  boats, 
where  there  are  the 
kind    of    passengers 
that  want  it  and  can 
pay  for  it.     On   the 
other    boats  ?       No. 
Nobody  but  the  deck 
hands  and  firemen  to 
drink  it.    "  Brandy  ? 
Yes,  I  've  got  brandy, 
plenty  of  it ;  but  you 
don't    want    any    of 
it    unless   you  've 
made  your  will."     It 
is  n't  as   it  used   to 
be  in  the  old  times. 
Then  everybody  trav- 
elled  by  steamboat, 
everybody   drank, 
and  everybody  treat- 
ed    everybody    else. 
"  Now    most    every- 
body  goes    by    rail- 
road,  and    the   rest 
don't  drink."    In  the 
old  times,   the  bar- 
keeper owned  the  bar  himself,  "  and  was  gay  and  smarty  and 
talky  and  all  jewelled  up,  and  was  the  toniest  aristocrat  on 
the  boat ;  used  to  make  $2,000  on  a  trip.     A  father  who  left 


A   PLAIN   GILL. 


TONY  ARISTOCRATS. 


371 


his  son  a  steamboat  bar,  left  him  a  fortune.  Now  he  leaves 
him  board  and  lodging ;  yes,  and  washing,  if  a  shirt  a  trip 
will  do.  Yes,  indeedy,  times  are  changed.  Why,  do  you 
know,  on  the  principal  line  of  boats  on  the  Upper  Missis- 
sippi, they  don't  have  any  bar  at  all !  Sounds  like  poetry, 
but  it 's  the  petrified  truth." 


CHAPTER    XXXIV. 


TOUGH  YARNS. 


STACK  ISLAND.  1  remembered  Stack  Island;  also 
Lake  Providence,  Louisiana  —  which  is  the  first  dis- 
tinctly Southern-looking  town  you  come  to,  downward- 
bound  ;  lies  level  and  low,  shade-trees  hung  with  venerable 
gray  beards  of  Spanish  moss ;  "  restful,  pensive,  Sunday 
aspect  about  the  place,"  comments  Uncle  Mumford,  with 
feeling —  also  with  truth. 

A  Mr.  H.  furnished  some  minor  details  of  fact  concerning 
this  region  which  I  would  have  hesitated  to  believe  if  I  had 
not  known  him  to  be  a  steamboat  mate.     He  was  a  passenger 

of  ours,  a  resident  of  Arkansas 
City,  and  bound  to  Vicksburg 
to  join  his  boat,  a  little  Sun- 
flower packet.  He  was  an  aus- 
tere man,  and  had  the  reputa- 
tion of  being  singularly  un- 
worldly, for  a  river  man.  Among 
other  things,  he  said  that  Ar- 
kansas had  been  injured  and 
kept  back  by  generations  of  ex- 
aggerations concerning  the  mos- 
quitoes there.  One  may  smile? 
said  he,  and  turn  the  matter  off  as  being  a  small  thing ;  but 
when  you  come  to  look  at  the  effects  produced,  in  the  way  of 
discouragement  of  immigration,  and  diminished  values  of 
property,  it  was  quite  the  opposite  of  a  small  thing,  or  thing 
in  any  wise  to  be  coughed  down  or  sneered  at.     These  mos- 


MOSQUITOES. 


MOSQUITO    COUNTRIES. 


373 


quitoes  had  been  persistently  represented  as  being  formidable 
and  lawless;  whereas  "  the  truth  is,  they  are  feeble,  insig- 
nificant in  size,  diffident  to  a  fault,  sensitive  "  —  and  so  on, 
and  so  on ;  you  would  have  supposed  he  was  talking  about 
his  family.  But  if  he  was  soft  on  the  Arkansas  mosquitoes, 
he  was  hard  enough  on  the  mosquitoes  of  Lake  Providence 
to  make  up  for  it — "those  Lake  Providence  colossi,"  as  he 
finely  called  them.  He  said  that  two  of  them  could  whip  a 
dog,  and  that  four  of  them  could  hold  a  man  down ;  and 
except  help  come,  they  would  kill  him  —  "  butcher  him,"  as 
he  expressed  it.  Referred  in  a  sort  of  casual  way  - —  and  yet 
significant  way  —  to  "  the 
fact  that  the  life  policy  in 
its  simplest  form  is  un- 
known in  Lake  Providence 
— they  take  out  a  mosquito 
policy  besides."  He  told 
many  remarkable  things 
about  those  lawless  insects. 
Among  others,  said  he  had 
seen  them  try  to  vote.  No- 
ticing that  this  statement 
seemed  to  be  a  good  deal 
of  a  strain  on  us,  he  mod- 
ified it  a  little :  said  he 
might  have  been  mista- 
ken, as  to  that  particular, 
but'  knew  he  had  seen 
them  around  the  polls 
"  canvassing." 

There  was  another  pas- 
senger—  friend  of  H.'s  — 
who  backed  up  the  harsh 
evidence     against     those 

mosquitoes,  and  detailed  some  stirring  adventures  which  he 
had  had  with  them.     The  stories  were  pretty  sizable,  merely 


A  BAD   EAR. 


374 


FROZEN   TRUTH. 


pretty  sizable ;  yet  Mr.  H.  was  continually  interrupting  with  a 
cold,  inexorable  "  Wait  —  knock  off  twenty-five  per  cent  of 
that ;  now  go  on ;  "  or,  "  Wait  —  you  are  getting  that  too 
strong ;  cut  it  down,  cut  it  down  —  you  get  a  leetle  too  much 
costumery  on  to  your  statements :  always  dress  a  fact  in 
tights,  never  in  an  ulster  ;  "  or,  "  Pardon,  once  more  :  if  you 
are  going  to  load  anything  more  on  to  that  statement,  you 
want  to  get  a  couple  of  lighters  and  tow  the  rest,  because  it 's 
drawing  all  the  water  there  is  in  the  river  already  ;  stick  to 
facts  —  just  stick  to  the  cold  facts  ;  what  these  gentlemen 
want  for  a  book  is  the  frozen  truth  —  ain't  that  so,  gentle- 
men ? "  He  explained  privately  that  it  was  necessary  to 
watch  this  man  all  the  time,  and  keep  him  within  bounds  ; 
it  would  not  do  to  neglect  this  precaution,  as  he,  Mr.  H., 
"  knew  to  his  sorrow."  Said  he, "  I  will  not  deceive  you ;  he 
told  me  such  a  monstrous  lie  once,  that  it  swelled  my  left 
ear  up,  and  spread  it  so  that  I  was  actually  not  able  to  see 
out  around  it ;  it  remained  so  for  months,  and  people  came 
miles  to  see  me  fan  myself  with  it." 


CHAPTER  XXXV. 


VICKSBURG  DURING   THE   TROUBLE. 


WE  used  to  plough  past  the  lofty  hill-city,  Vicksburg, 
down -stream ;  but  we  cannot  do  that  now.  A  cut- 
off has  made  a  country  town  of  it,  like  Osceola,  St.  Gen- 
evieve, and  several  others.     There  is  currentless   water  — 

also  a  big 
island  — 
in  front 
of  Vicks- 
burg now. 
You  come 
down  the 
river   the 
other  side 
of  the  is- 
land, then 
turn   and 
come  up 
r_  -  ■    to   the   town  ;    that 
is,  in  high  water :  in 
low  water  you  can't  come 
up,  but  must  land  some 
distance  below  it. 
Signs  and  scars  still  remain,  as  reminders  of  Vicksburg's 
tremendous  war-experiences;    earthworks,  trees  crippled  by 
the  cannon   balls,  cave-refuges   in  the   clay  precipices,  etc. 
The   caves   did   good   service  during  the   six  weeks'   bom- 


VICKSBUKG. 


376  BATTLE-SCARS   REMAIN. 

bardment  of  the  city  —  May  18  to  July  4,  1863.  They  were 
used  by  the  non-combatants  —  mainly  by  the  women  and 
children ;  not  to  live  in  constantly,  but  to  fly  to  for  safety 
on  occasion.  They  were  mere  holes,  tunnels,  driven  into 
the  perpendicular  clay  bank,  then  branched  Y  shape,  within 
the  hill.  Life  in  Vicksburg,  during  the  six  weeks  was  per- 
haps —  but  wait ;  here  are  some  materials  out  of  which  to 
reproduce  it :  — 

Population,  twenty-seven  thousand  soldiers  and  three  thou- 
sand non-combatants ;  the  city  utterly  cut  off  from  the 
world  —  walled  solidly  in,  the  frontage  by  gunboats,  the 
rear  by  soldiers  and  batteries ;  hence,  no  buying  and  sell- 
ing with  the  outside ;  no  passing  to  and  fro  ;  no  God-speed- 
ing a  parting  guest,  no  welcoming  a  coming  one ;  no  printed 
acres  of  world-wide  news  to  be  read  at  breakfast,  mornings 

—  a  tedious  dull  absence  of  such  matter,  instead;  hence, 
also,  no  running  to  see  steamboats  smoking  into  view  in 
the  distance  up  or  down,  and  ploughing  toward  the  town 

—  for  none  came,  the  river  lay  vacant  and  undisturbed  ;  no 
rush  and  turmoil  around  the  railway  station,  no  struggling 
over  bewildered  swarms  of  passengers  by  noisy  mobs  of 
hack  men  —  all  quiet  there ;  flour  two  hundred  dollars  a 
barrel,  sugar  thirty,  corn  ten  dollars  a  bushel,  bacon  five 
dollars  a  pound,  rum  a  hundred  dollars  a  gallon  ;  other 
things  in  proportion :  consequently,  no  roar  and  racket  of 
drays  and  carriages  tearing  along  the  streets ;  nothing  for 
them  to  do,  among  that  handful  of  non-combatants  of 
exhausted  means ;  at  three  o'clock  in  the  morning,  silence ; 
silence  so  dead  that  the  measured  tramp  of  a  sentinel 
can  be  heard  a  seemingly  impossible  distance ;  out  of  hear- 
ing of  this  lonely  sound,  perhaps  the  stillness  is  absolute: 
all  in  a  moment  come  ground-shaking  thunder-crashes  of 
artillery,  the  sky  is  cobwebbed  with  the  cris-crossing  red 
lines  streaming  from  soaring  bomb-shells,  and  a  rain  of 
iron  fragments  descends  upon  the  city ;  descends  upon  the 
empty   streets :    streets  which    are   not   empty    a    moment 


AN   AWFUL  QUIET. 


377 


later,  but  mottled  with  dim  figures  of  frantic  women  and 
children  skurrying  from  home  and  bed  toward  the  cave 
dungeons  —  encouraged  by  the  humorous  grim  soldiery,  who 
shout  "  Rats,  to  your  holes  !  "  and  laugh. 

The  cannon -thunder  rages,  shells  scream  and  crash  over- 
head, the  iron  rain  pours  down,  one  hour,  two  hours,  three, 


%.JUg 


THE   RIVER   WAS   UNDISTURBED. 


possibly  six,  then  stops ;  silence  follows,  but  the  streets  are 
still  empty  ;  the  silence  continues  ;  by  and  by  a  head  projects 
from  a  cave  here  and  there  and  yonder,  and  reconnoitres, 
cautiously  ;  the  silence  still  continuing,  bodies  follow  heads, 
and  jaded,  half-smothered  creatures  group  themselves  about, 
stretch  their  cramped  limbs,  draw  in  deep  draughts  of  the 
grateful  fresh  air,  gossip  with  the  neighbors  from  the  next 


378  LIVING   UNDER  FIRE. 

cave ;  maybe  straggle  off  home  presently,  or  take  a  lounge 
through  the  town,  if  the  stillness  continues;  and  will  skurry 


THE    CAVE    DWELLERS. 


to  the  holes  again,  by  and  by,  when  the  war-tempest  breaks 
forth  once  more. 

There  being  but  three  thousand  of  these  cave-dwellers  — 
merely  the  population  of  a  village  —  would  they  not  come  to 


NON-COMBATANTS   IN   WAR.  379 

know  each  other,  after  a  week  or  two,  and  familiarly ;  inso- 
much that  the  fortunate  or  unfortunate  experiences  of  one 
would  be  of  interest  to  all  ? 

Those  are  the  materials  furnished  by  history.  From  them 
might  not  almost  anybody  reproduce  for  himself  the  life  of 
that  time  in  Vicksburg  ?  Could  you,  who  did  not  experience 
it,  come  nearer  to  reproducing  it  to  the  imagination  of  another 
non-participant  than  could  a  Vicksburger  who  did  experience 
it  ?  It  seems  impossible  ;  and  yet  there  are  reasons  why  it 
might  not  really  be.  When  one  makes  his  first  voyage  in  a 
ship,  it  is  an  experience  which  multitudinously  bristles  with 
striking  novelties  ;  novelties  which  are  in  such  sharp  con- 
trast with  all  this  person's  former  experiences  that  they  take 
a  seemingly  deathless  grip  upon  his  imagination  and  memory. 
By  tongue  or  pen  he  can  make  a  landsman  live  that  strange 
and  stirring  voyage  over  with  him ;  make  him  see  it  all  and 
feel  it  all.  But  if  he  wait  ?  If  he  make  ten  voyages  in 
succession  —  what  then  ?  Why,  the  thing  has  lost  color, 
snap,  surprise ;  and  has  become  commonplace.  The  man 
would  have  nothing  to  tell  that  would  quicken  a  landsman's 
pulse. 

Years  ago,  I  talked  with  a  couple  of  the  Vicksburg  non- 
combatants  —  a  man  and  his  wife.  Left  to  tell  their  story 
in  their  own  way,  those  people  told  it  without  fire,  almost 
without  interest. 

A  week  of  their  wonderful  life  there  would  have  made 
their  tongues  eloquent  forever  perhaps  ;  but  they  had  six 
weeks  of  it,  and  that  wore  the  novelty  all  out ;  they 
got  used  to  being  bomb-shelled  out  of  home  and  into  the 
ground ;  the  matter  became  commonplace.  After  that,  the 
possibility  of  their  ever  being  startlingly  interesting  in  their 
talks  about  it  was  gone.  What  the  man  said  was  to  this 
effect :  — 

"  It  got  to  be  Sunday  all  the  time.  Seven  Sundays  in  the  week  — 
to  us,  anyway.     We  had  n't  anything  to  do,  and  time  hung  heavy. 


380 


AN   IRON   STORM. 


Seven  Sundays,  and  all  of  them  broken  up  at  one  time  or  another,  in 
the  day  or  in  the  night,  by  a  few  hours  of  the  awful  storm  of  fire 
and  thunder  and  iron.  At  first  we  used  to  shin  for  the  holes  a  good 
deal  faster  than  we  did  afterwards.  The  first  time,  I  forgot  the  chil- 
dren, and  Maria  fetched  them  both  along.     When  she  was  all  safe 


BRINGING   THE    CHILDREN. 


in  the  cave  she  fainted.  Two  or  three  weeks  afterwards,  when  she 
was  running  for  the  holes,  one  morning,  through  a  shell-shower,  a 
big  shell  burst  near  her  and  covered  her  all  over  with  dirt,  and  a 
piece  of  the  iron  carried  away  her  game-bag  of  false  hair  from  the 
back  of  her  head.  Well,  she  stopped  to  get  that  game-bag  before 
she  shoved  along  again  !  Was  getting  used  to  things  already,  you 
see.  We  all  got  so  that  we  could  tell  a  good  deal  about  shells ;  and 
after  that  we  did  n't  always  go  under  shelter  if  it  was  a  light  shower. 
Us  men  would  loaf  around  and  talk  ;  and  a  man  would  say,  '  There 
she  goes ! '  and  name  the  kind  of  shell  it  was  from  the  sound  of  it, 


WHERE   WILL   IT   LIGHT? 


381 


and  go  on  talking  —  if  there  was  n't  any 
danger  from  it.     If  a  shell  was  bursting 
close  over  us,  we  stopped  talking  and 
stood  still ;  —  uncomfortable,  yes,  but 
it  was  n't   safe  to  move.     When  it  let 
go,  we  went  on  talking  again,  if  nobody 
hurt  —  maybe  saying,  '  That  was  a  rip- 
per ! '  or  some  such  commonplace  com- 
ment before  we  resumed  ;  or,  maybe, 
we  would  see  a  shell  poising  itself 
away  high  in  the  air  overhead.     In 
that    case,  every  fellow 
just  whipped  out  a  sud- 
den,   '  See    you    again, 
gents  ! '  and  shoved.  Of- 
ten   and    often    I    saw 
gangs   of  ladies  prome- 
nading the  streets,  look- 
ing as  cheerful  as  you 
please,  and  keeping  an 
eye  canted  up  watching 
the  shells  ;  and  I  've  seen 
them  stop  still  when  they 
were     uncertain     about 
what  a  shell  was  going 
to  do,  and  wait  and  make 
certain ;  and   after  that 
they      s'antered      along 
again,    or    lit    out    for 
shelter,  according  to  the 
verdict.     Streets  in  some 
towns  have  a   litter   of 
pieces  of  paper,  and  odds 
and  ends  of  one  sort  or 
another    lying    around. 
Ours  had  n't ;    they  had 

iron  litter.  Sometimes  a  man  would  gather  up  all  the  iron  fragments 
and  unbursted  shells  in  his  neighborhood,  and  pile  them  into  a  kind 
of  monument  in  his  front  yard  —  a  ton  of  it,  sometimes.     No  glass 


WAIT   AND   MAKE    CERTAIN. 


382  CAVES   AND   WHISKEY. 

left ;  glass  could  n't  stand  such  a  bombardment ;  it  was  all  shivered 
out.  Windows  of  the  houses  vacant  —  looked  like  eye-holes  in  a 
skull.      Whole  panes  were  as  scarce  as  news. 

"  We  had  church  Sundays.  Not  many  there,  along  at  first ;  but 
by  and  by  pretty  good  turnouts.  I  've  seen  service  stop  a  minute, 
and  everybody  sit  quiet  —  no  voice  heard,  pretty  funeral-like  then  — 
and  all  the  more  so  on  account  of  the  awful  boom  and  crash  going 
on  outside  and  overhead  ;  and  pretty  soon,  when  a  body  could  be 
heard,  service  would  go  on  again.  Organs  and  church-music  mixed 
up  with  a  bombardment  is  a  powerful  queer  combination  —  along  at 
first.  Coming  out  of  church,  one  morning,  we  had  an  accident  — 
the  only  one  that  happened  around  me  on  a  Sunday.  I  was  just 
having  a  hearty  hand-shake  with  a  friend  I  had  n't  seen  for  a  while, 
and  saying,  '  Drop  into  our  cave  to-night,  after  bombardment ;  we  've 
got  hold  of  a  pint  of  prime  wh  — .  '  Whiskey,  I  was  going  to  say, 
you  know,  but  a  shell  interrupted.  A  chunk  of  it  cut  the  man's  arm 
off,  and  left  it  dangling  in  my  hand.  And  do  you  know  the  thing 
that  is  going  to  stick  the  longest  in  my  memory,  and  outlast  every- 
thing else,  little  and  big,  I  reckon,  is  the  mean  thought  I  had 
then  ?  It  was  '  the  whiskey  is  saved.'1  And  yet,  don't  you  know, 
it  was  kind  of  excusable ;  because  it  was  as  scarce  as  diamonds, 
and  we  had  only  just  that  little  ;  never  had  another  taste  during 
the  siege. 

"  Sometimes'  the  caves  were  desperately  crowded,  and  always  hot 
and  close.  Sometimes  a  cave  had  twenty  or  twenty-five  people 
packed  into  it ;  no  turning-room  for  anybody ;  air  so  foul,  some- 
times, you  could  n't  have  made  a  candle  burn  in  it.  A  child  was 
born  in  one  pf  those  caves  one  night.  Think  of  that ;  why,  it  was 
like  having  it  born  in  a  trunk. 

"  Twice  we  had  sixteen  people  in  our  cave  ;  and  a  number  of 
times  we  had  a  dozen.  Pretty  suffocating  in  there.  We  always  had 
eight ;  eight  belonged  there.  Hunger  and  misery  and  sickness  and 
fright  and  sorrow,  and  I  don't  know  what  all,  got  so  loaded  into 
them  that  none  of  them  were  ever  rightly  their  old  selves  after  the 
siege.  They  all  died  but  three  of  us  within  a  couple  of  years.  One 
night  a  shell  burst  in  front  of  the  hole  and  caved  it  in  and  stopped  it 
up.  It  was  lively  times,  for  a  while,  digging  out.  Some  of  us  came 
near  smothering.  After  that  we  made  two  openings  —  ought  to  have 
thought  of  it  at  first. 


MULE  MEAT   IS   GOOD. 


383 


"  Mule  meat  ?  No,  we  only  got  down  to  that  the  last  day  or  two. 
Of  course  it  was  good ;  anything  is  good  when  you  are  starving." 

This  man  had  kept  a  diary  during  —  six  weeks  ?  No,  only 
the  first  six  days.  The  first  day,  eight  close  pages  ;  the 
second,  five;  the  third,  one  —  loosely  written;  the  fourth, 
three  or  four  lines  ;  a  line  or  two  the  fifth  and  sixth  days  ; 
seventh  day,  diary  abandoned  ;  life  in  terrific  Vicksburg 
having  now  become  commonplace  and  matter  of  course. 


"mtjle  meat?' 


The  war  history  of  Vicksburg  has  more  about  it  to  interest 
the  general  reader  than  that  of  any  other  of  the  river-towns. 
It  is  full  of  variety,  full  of  incident,  full  of  the  picturesque. 
Vicksburg  held  out  longer  than  any  other  important  river- 
town,  and  saw  warfare  in  all  its  phases,  both  land  and  water 
—  the  siege,  the  mine,  the  assault,  the  repulse,  the  bombard- 
ment, sickness,  captivity,  famine. 

The  most  beautiful  of  all  the  national  cemeteries  is  here 
Over  the  great  gateway  is  this  inscription  :  — 


384 


THE   NATIONAL   CEMETERY. 


"  HERE   REST   IN   PEACE   16,600   WHO    DIED   FOR   THEIR   COUNTRY 
IN   THE    YEARS   1861    TO   1865." 

The  grounds  are  nobly  situated ;  being  very  high  and  com- 
manding a  wide  prospect  of  land  and  river.     They  are  taste- 


fully laid  out  in  broad  terraces,  with  wind- 
ing roads  and  paths ;  and  there  is  profuse 
adornment  in  the  way  of  semi-tropical 
Pfpft'     shrubs  and  flowers  ;  and  in  one  part  is  a 
W'       piece  of  native  wild-wood,  left  just  as  it 
*Y.  [/■  grew,  and,  therefore,  perfect  in  its  charm. 

Everything  about  this  cemetery  suggests 
the  hand  of   the  national  Government. 
The  Government's  work  is  always  conspicuous  for  excellence, 
solidity,  thoroughness,  neatness.     The  Government  does  its 
work  well  in  the  first  place,  and  then  takes  care  of  it. 


RELICS  AND  CHANGES.  385 

By  winding-roads  —  which  were  often  cut  to  so  great  a 
depth  between  perpendicular  walls  that  they  were  mere  roof- 
less tunnels  —  we  drove  out  a  mile  or  two  and  visited  the 
monument  which  stands  upon  the  scene  of  the  surrender  of 
Vicksburg  to  General  Grant  by  General  Pemberton.  Its 
metal  will  preserve  it  from  the  hackings  and  chippings  which 
so  defaced  its  predecessor,  which  was  of  marble  ;  but  the 
brick  foundations  are  crumbling,  and  it  will  tumble  down  by 
and  by.  It  overlooks  a  picturesque  region  of  wooded  hills 
and  ravines ;  and  is  not  unpicturesque  itself,  being  well 
smothered  in  flowering  weeds.  The  battered  remnant  of 
the  marble  monument  has  been  removed  to  the  National 
Cemetery. 

On  the  road,  a  quarter  of  a  mile  townward,  an  aged  colored 
man  showed  us,  with  pride,  an  unexploded  bomb-shell  which 
has  lain  in  his  yard  since  the  day  it  fell  there  during  the 
siege. 

"  I  was  a-stannin'  heah,  an'  de  dog  was  a-stannin'  heah  ; 
de  dog  he  went  for  de  shell,  gwine  to  pick  a  fuss  wid  it ;  but 
I  didn't ;  I  says,  '  Jes'  make  youseff  at  home  heah  ;  lay  still 
whah  you  is,  or  bust  up  de  place,  jes'  as  you 's  a  mind  to,  but 
J's  got  business  out  in  de  woods,  /has  ! '  " 

Vicksburg  is  a  town  of  substantial  business  streets  and 
pleasant  residences ;  it  commands  the  commerce  of  the 
Yazoo  and  Sunflower  Rivers  ;  is  pushing  railways  in  several 
directions,  through  rich  agricultural  regions,  and  has  a  prom- 
ising future  of  prosperitj?"  and  importance. 

Apparently,  nearly  all  the  river  towns,  big  and  little,  have 
made  up  their  minds  that  they  must  look  mainly  to  railroads 
for  wealth  and  upbuilding,  henceforth.  They  are  acting 
upon  this  idea.  The  signs  are,  that  the  next  twenty  years 
will  bring  about  some  noteworthy  changes  in  the  Valley,  in 
the  direction  of  increased  population  and  wealth,  and  in  the 
intellectual  advancement  and  the  liberalizing  of  opinion 
which  go  naturally  with  these.  And  yet,  if  one  may  judge 
by  the  past,  the  river  towns  will  manage  to  find  and  use  a 

25 


386  A  STORY  TO   COME. 

chance,  here  and  there,  to  cripple  and  retard  their  progress. 
They  kept  themselves  back  in  the  days  of  steamboating 
supremacy,  by  a  system  of  wharfage-dues  so  stupidly  graded 
as  to  prohibit  what  may  be  called  small  retail  traffic  in 
freights  and  passengers.  Boats  were  charged  such  heavy 
wharfage  that  they  could  not  afford  to  land  for  one  or  two 
passengers  or  a  light  lot  of  freight.  Instead  of  encouraging 
the  bringing  of  trade  to  their  doors,  the  towns  diligently 
and  effectively  discouraged  it.  They  could  have  had  many 
boats  and  low  rates  ;  but  their  policy  rendered  few  boats 
and  high  rates  compulsory.  It  was  a  policy  which  extended 
—  and  extends  —  from  New  Orleans  to  St.  Paul. 

We  had  a  strong  desire  to  make  a  trip  up  the  Yazoo  and 
the  Sunflower  —  an  interesting  region  at  any  time,  but  addi- 
tionally interesting  at  this  time,  because  up  there  the 
great  inundation  was  still  to  be  seen  in  force,  —  but  we  were 
nearly  sure  to  have  to  wait  a  day  or  more  for  a  New  Orleans 
boat  on  our  return ;  so  we  were  obliged  to  give  up  the 
project. 

Here  is  a  story  which  I  picked  up  on  board  the  boat  that 
night.  I  insert  it  in  this  place  merely  because  it  is  a  good 
story,  not  because  it  belongs  here  —  for  it  does  n't.  It  was 
told  by  a  passenger  —  a  college  professor — and  was  called 
to  the  surface  in  the  course  of  a  general  conversation  which 
began  with  talk  about  horses,  drifted  into  talk  about  astron- 
omy, then  into  talk  about  the  lynching  of  the  gamblers  in 
Vicksburg  half  a  century  ago,  then  into  talk  about  dreams 
and  superstitions  ;  and  ended,  after  midnight,  in  a  dispute 
over  free  trade  and  protection. 


CHAPTER  XXXVI. 


THE    PROFESSOR'S    YARN. 


IT  was  in  the  early  days.  I  was  not  a  college  professor 
then.  I  was  a  humble-minded  young  land-surveyor,  with 
the  world  before  me  — to  survey,  in  case  anybody  wanted  it 
done.  I  had  a  contract  to  survey  a  route  for  a  great  mining- 
ditch  in  California,  and  I  was  on  my  way  thither,  by  sea  — 
a  three  or  four  weeks'  voyage.  There  were  a  good  many 
passengers,  but  I  had  very  little  to  say  to  them ;  reading  and 
dreaming  were  my  passions,  and  I  avoided  conversation  in 
order  to  indulge  these  appetites.  There  were  three  profes- 
sional gamblers  on  board — rough,  repulsive  fellows.  I  never 
had  any  talk  with  them,  yet  i  could  not  help  seeing  them 
with  some  frequency,  for  they  gambled  in  an  upper-deck 
state-room  every  day  and  night,  and  in  my  promenades  I 
often  had  glimpses  of  them  through  their  door,  which  stood 
a  little  ajar  to  let  out  the  surplus  tobacco  smoke  and  profan- 
ity. They  were  an  evil  and  hateful  presence,  but  I  had  to 
put  up  with  it,  of  course. 

There  was  one  other  passenger  who  fell  under  my  eye  a 
good  deal,  for  he  seemed  determined  to  be  friendly  with  me, 
and  I  could  not  have  gotten  rid  of  him  without  running  some 
chance  of  hurting  his  feelings^  and  I  was  far  from  wishing  to 
do  that.  Besides,  there  was  something  engaging  in  his  coun- 
trified simplicity  and  his  beaming  good-nature.  The  first 
time  I  saw  this  Mr.  John  Backus,  I  guessed,  from  his  clothes 
and  his  looks,  that  he  was  a  grazier  or  farmer  from  the  back 
woods  of  some  western  State  —  doubtless  Ohio  —  and  after- 
ward when  he  dropped  into  his  personal  history  and  I  dis- 


388 


A   GENTLE   FARMER. 


covered  that  he  was  a  cattle-raiser  from  interior  Ohio,  I  was 
so  pleased  with  my  own  penetration  that  I  warmed  toward 
him  for  verifying  my  instinct. 

He  got  to  dropping  alongside  me  every  day,  after  break- 
fast, to  help  me  make  my  promenade  ;  and  so,  in  the  course 
of  time,  his  easy-working  jaw  had  told  me  everything  about 

his   business, 
his  prospects, 
his  family,  his 
relatives,  his 
politics  —  in 
fact       every- 
thing   that 
concerned     a 
Backus,  living   or   dead.      And 
meantime  I  think  he  had  man- 
aged to  get  out  of  me  everything 
I  knew  about  my  trade,  my  tribe, 
my  purposes,  my  prospects,  and 
myself.      He  was  a  gentle  and 
persuasive  genius,  and  this  thing 
showed  it;  for  I  was  not  given 
to  talking  about  my  matters.     I 
said  something  about  triangula- 
tion,   once ;    the     stately    word 
pleased  his  ear ;  he  inquired  what 
it  meant ;  I  explained ;  after  that 
he  quietly  and  inoffensively  ig- 
nored   my    name,    and    always 
called  me  Triangle. 

What  an  enthusiast  he  was  in 
cattle  !  At  the  bare  name  of  a 
bull  or  a  cow,  his  eye  would  light 
and  his  eloquent  tongue  would 
turn  itself  loose.  As  long  as  I 
would  walk  and  listen,  he  would  walk  and  talk ;  he  knew  all 


MY    PROMENADE. 


AN  INGENUOUS  CONFESSION.  389 

breeds,  he  loved  all  breeds,  he  caressed  them  all  with  his 
affectionate  tongue.  I  tramped  along  in  voiceless  misery 
whilst  the  cattle  question  was  up  ;  when  I  could  endure  it 
no  longer,  I  used  to  deftly  insert  a  scientific  topic  into  the 
conversation ;  then  my  eye  fired  and  his  faded  ;  my  tongue 
fluttered,  his  stopped  ;  life  was  a  joy  to  me,  and  a  sadness  to 
him. 

One  day  he  said,  a  little  hesitatingly,  and  with  somewhat 
of  diffidence : — 

"Triangle,  would  you  mind  coming  down  to  my  state-room 
a  minute,  and  have  a  little  talk  on  a  certain  matter  ? " 

I  went  with  him  at  once.  Arrived  there,  he  put  his  head 
out,  glanced  up  and  down  the  saloon  warily,  then  closed 
the  door  and  locked  it.  We  sat  down  on  the  sofa,  and  he 
said :  — 

"  I  'm  a-going  to  make  a  little  proposition  to  you,  and  if  it 
strikes  you  favorable,  it  '11  be  a  middling  good  thing  for  both 
of  us.  You  ain't  a-going  out  to  Californy  for  fun,  nuther 
am  I  —  it 's  business,  ain't  that  so  ?  Well,  you  can  do  me  a 
good  turn,  and  so  can  I  you,  if  we  see  fit.  I  've  raked  and 
scraped  and  saved,  a  considerable  many  years,  and  I  've  got 
it  all  here."  He  unlocked  an  old  hair  trunk,  tumbled  a  chaos 
of  shabby  clothes  aside,  and  drew  a  short  stout  bag  into  view 
for  a  moment,  then  buried  it  again  and  relocked  the  trunk. 
Dropping  his  voice  to  a  cautious  low  tone,  he  continued, 
"  She  's  all  there  —  a  round  ten  thousand  dollars  in  yellow- 
boys  ;  now  this  is  my  little  idea :  What  I  don't  know  about 
raising  cattle,  ain't  worth  knowing.  There  's  mints  of  money 
in  it,  in  Californy.  Well,  I  know,  and  you  know,  that  all 
along  a  line  that 's  being  surveyed,  there  's  little  dabs  of  land 
that  they  call  '  gores,'  that  fall  to  the  surveyor  free  gratis  for 
nothing.  All  you  've  got  to  do,  on  your  side,  is  to  survey  in 
such  a  way  that  the  '  gores '  will  fall  on  good  fat  land,  then 
you  turn  'em  over  to  me,  I  stock  'em  with  cattle,  in  rolls  the 
cash,  I  plank  out  your  share  of  the  dollars  regular,  right 
along,  and — " 


390 


NOT  THAT  KIND  OF  SURVEYOR. 


I  was  sorry  to  wither  his  blooming  enthusiasm,  but  it 
could  not  be  helped.     I  interrupted,  and  said  severely,  — 


"I  am  not  that  kind 
of  a  surveyor.  Let  us 
change  the  subject,  Mr. 
Backus." 

It  was  pitiful  to  see  his 
confusion  and  hear  his 
awkward  and  shamefaced 
apologies.  I  was  as 
much   distressed   as    he 

was  —  especially  as  he  seemed  so  far  from  having  suspected 
that  there  was  anything  improper  in  his  proposition.  So  I 
hastened  to  console  him  and  lead  him  on  to  forget  his  mishap 
in  a  conversational  orgy  about  cattle  and  butchery.  We 
were  lying  at  Acapulco  ;  and,  as  we  went  on  deck,  it  hap- 


A   SHORT   STOUT   BAG. 


"I  WAR  N'T  RAISED  TO   IT."  391 

pened  luckily  that  the  crew  were  just  beginning  to  hoist 
some  beeves  aboard  in  slings.  Backus's  melancholy  van- 
ished instantly,  and  with  it  the  memory  of  his  late  mistake. 

"  Now  only  look  at  that !  "  cried  he  ;  "  My  goodness,  Tri- 
angle, what  would  they  say  to  it  in  Ohio  ?  Would  n't  their 
eyes  bug  out,  to  see  'em  handled  like  that  ?  —  would  n't  they, 
though  ?  " 

All  the  passengers  were  on  deck  to  look  —  even  the  gam- 
blers —  and  Backus  knew  them  all,  and  had  afflicted  them 
all  with  his  pet  topic.  As  I  moved  away,  I  saw  one  of  the 
gamblers  approach  and  accost  him  ;  then  another  of  them ; 
then  the  third.  I  halted ;  waited ;  watched ;  the  conversa- 
tion continued  between  the  four  men ;  it  grew  earnest ; 
Backus  drew  gradually  away ;  the  gamblers  followed,  and 
kept  at  his  elbow.  I  was  uncomfortable.  However,  as  they 
passed  me  presently,  I  heard  Backus  say,  with  a  tone  of  per- 
secuted annoyance :  — 

"  But  it  ain't  any  use,  gentlemen  ;  I  tell  you  again,  as  I  've 
told  you  a  half  a  dozen  times  before,  I  war  n't  raised  to  it,  and 
I  ain't  a-going  to  resk  it." 

I  felt  relieved.  "  His  level  head  will  be  his  sufficient  pro- 
tection," I  said  to  myself. 

During  the  fortnight's  run  from  Acapulco  to  San  Fran- 
cisco I  several  times  saw  the  gamblers  talking  earnestly  with 
Backus,  and  once  I  threw  out  a  gentle  warning  to  him.  He 
chuckled  comfortably  and  said, — 

"  Oh,  yes  !  they  tag  around  after  me  considerable  —  want 
me  to  play  a  little,  just  for  amusement,  they  say  —  but  laws- 
a-me,  if  my  folks  have  told  me  once  to  look  out  for  that  sort 
of  live-stock,  they  've  told  me  a  thousand  times,  I  reckon." 

By  and  by,  in  due  course,  we  were  approaching  San 
Francisco.  It  was  an  ugly  black  night,  with  a  strong  wind 
blowing,  but  there  was  not  much  sea.  I  was  on  deck,  alone. 
Toward  ten  I  started  below.  A  figure  issued  from  the  gam- 
blers' den,  and  disappeared  in  the  darkness.  I  experienced 
a  shock,  for  I  was  sure  it  was  Backus.     I  flew  down  the 


392 


ENTRAPPED   AT  LAST. 


companion-way,  looked  about  for  him,  could  not  find  him, 
then  returned  to  the  deck  just  in  time  to  catch  a  glimpse 
of  him  as  he  re-entered  that  confounded  nest  of  rascality. 
Had  he  yielded  at  last?  I  feared  it.  What  had  he  gone 
below  for?  —  His  bag  of  coin?  Possibly.  I  drew  near  the 
door,  full  of  bodings.     It  was  a-crack,  and  I  glanced  in  and 

saw  a  sight  that  made  me 
bitterly  wish  I  had  given 
my  attention  to  saving  my 
poor  cattle-friend,  instead 
of  reading  and  dreaming 
my  foolish  time  away.  He 
was  gambling.  Worse  still, 
he  was  being  plied  with 
champagne,  and  was  al- 
ready showing  some  effect 
from  it.  He  praised  the 
"  cider,"  as  he  called  it,  and 
said  now  that  he  had  got  a 
taste  of  it  he  almost  be- 
lieved he  would  drink  it 
if  it  was  spirits,  it  was  so 
good  and  so  ahead  of  any- 
thing he  had  ever  run  across 
before.  Surreptitious 
smiles,  at  this,  passed  from 
one  rascal  to  another,  and 
they  filled  all  the  glasses,  and  whilst  Backus  honestly  drained 
Ills  to  the  bottom  they  pretended  to  do  the  same,  but  threw 
the  wine  over  their  shoulders. 

I  could  not  bear  the  scene,  so  I  wandered  forward  and 
tried  to  interest  myself  in  the  sea  and  the  voices  of  the 
wind.  But  no,  my  uneasy  spirit  kept  dragging  me  back  at 
quarter-hour  intervals  ;  and  always  I  saw  Backus  drinking 
his  wine  —  fairly  and  squarely,  and  the  others  throwing 
theirs  away.     It  was  the  painfulest  night  I  ever  spent. 


THE    DOOR   WAS    A-CRACK. 


A  HELPLESS   VICTIM. 


393 


The  only  hope  I  had  was  that  we  might  reach  our  anchor- 
age with  speed  —  that  would  break  up  the  game.  I  helped 
the  ship  along  all  I  could  with  my  prayers.  At  last  we  went 
booming  through  the  Golden  Gate,  and  my  pulses  leaped  for 
joy.  I  hurried  back  to  that  door  and  glanced  in.  Alas,  there 
was  small  room  for  hope  —  Backus's  eyes  were  heavy  and 


bloodshot,  his  sweaty  face  was 
crimson,  his  speech  maudlin 
and  thick,  his  body  sawed  drunk- 
enly  about  with  the  weaving 
motion  of  the  ship.  He  drained 
another  glass  to  the  dregs, 
whilst  the  cards  were  being  dealt. 

He  took  his  hand,  glanced  at  it,  and  his  dull  eyes  lit  up 
for  a  moment.  The  gamblers  observed  it,  and  showed  their 
gratification  by  hardly  perceptible  signs. 

"  How  many  cards  ?  " 

"  None  !  "  said  Backus. 

One  villain  —  named  Hank  Wiley  —  discarded  one  card,, 


394  CATCHING  A  TARTAR. 

the  others  three  each.  The  betting  began.  Heretofore  the 
bets  had  been  trifling  —  a  dollar  or  two  ;  but  Backus  started 
off  with  an  eagle  now,  Wiley  hesitated  a  moment,  then  "  saw 
it "  and  "  went  ten  dollars  better."  The  other  two  threw  up 
their  hands. 

Backus  went  twenty  better.     Wiley  said, — 

"  I  see  that,  and  go  you  a  hundred  better  !  "  then  smiled 
and  reached  for  the  money. 

"  Let  it  alone,"  said  Backus,  with  drunken  gravity. 

"  What !  you  mean  to  say  you  're  going  to  cover  it  ?  " 

"  Cover  it  ?  Well  I  reckon  I  am  —  and  lay  another  hun- 
dred on  top  of  it,  too." 

He  reached  down  inside  his  overcoat  and  produced  the 
required  sum. 

"  Oh,  that 's  your  little  game,  is  it  ?  I  see  your  raise,  and 
raise  it  five  hundred  !  "  said  Wiley. 

"  Five  hundred  better  !  "  said  the  foolish  bull-driver,  and 
pulled  out  the  amount  and  showered  it  on  the  pile.  The 
three  conspirators  hardly  tried  to  conceal  their  exultation. 

All  diplomacy  and  pretence  were  dropped  now,  and  the 
sharp  exclamations  came  thick  and  fast,  and  the  yellow 
pyramid  grew  higher  and  higher.  At  last  ten  thousand 
dollars  lay  in  view.  Wiley  cast  a  bag  of  coin  on  the  table, 
and  said  with  mocking  gentleness,  — 

"  Five  thousand  dollars  better,  my  friend  from  the  rural 
districts  —  what  do  you  say  noiv  f  " 

"  I  call  you  !  "  said  Backus,  heaving  his  golden  shot-bag 
on  the  pile.     "  What  have  you  got  ? " 

"  Four  kings,  you  d — d  fool !  "  and  Wiley  threw  down  his 
cards  and  surrounded  the  stakes  with  his  arms. 

"  Four  aces,  you  ass ! "  thundered  Backus,  covering 
his  man  with  a  cocked  revolver.  "I'm  a  professional 
gambler  myself,  and  I've  been  laying  for  you  duffers  all 
this  voyage!''' 

Down  went  the  anchor,  rumbledy-dum-dum  !  and  the  long 
trip  was  ended. 


"FOUR  ACES,  YOU  ASS!" 


395 


Well  —  well,  it  is  a  sad  world.    One  of  the  three  gamblers 
was  Backus's  "  pal."     It  was  he  that  dealt  the  fateful  hands. 


'BEEN  LAYING  FOB,  YOU   DUFFERS 


According  to  an  understanding  with  the  two  victims,  he  was 
to  have  given  Backus  four  queens,  but  alas,  he  did  n't. 

A  week  later,  I  stumbled  upon  Backus  —  arrayed  in  the 
height  of  fashion —  in  Montgomery  Street.  He  said,  cheerily, 
as  we  were  parting,  — 

"  Ah,  by-the-way,  you  need  n't  mind  about  those  gores.  I 
don't  really  know  anything  about  cattle,  except  what  I  was 
able  to  pick  up  in  a  week's  apprenticeship  over  in  Jersey  just 


396 


PARTING  FOREVER. 


before  we  sailed.     My  cattle-culture  and  cattle-enthusiasm 
have  served  their  turn  —  I  shan't  need  them  any  more." 


Next  day  we  reluctantly  parted  from  the  "  Gold  Dust " 
and  her  officers,  hoping  to  see  that  boat  and  all  those  officers 
again,  some  day.  A  thing  which  the  fates  were  to  render 
tragically  impossible  ! 


CHAPTER  XXXVII. 

THE  END   OF  THE   "GOLD   DUST." 

FOR,  three  months  later,  August  8,  while  I  was  writing 
one  of  these  foregoing  chapters,  the  New  York  papers 
brought  this  telegram  :  — 

A    TERRIBLE     DISASTER. 

seventeen  persons  killed  by  an  explosion  on  the  steamer 
"gold  dust." 

"  Nashville,  Aug.  7.  —  A  despatch  from  Hickman,  Ky., 
says : — 

"  The  steamer  '  Gold  Dust '  exploded  her  boilers  at  three  o'clock 
to-day,  just  after  leaving  Hickman.  Forty-seven  persons  were 
scalded  and  seventeen  are  missing.  The  boat  was  landed  in  the 
eddy  just  above  the  town,  and  through  the  exertions  of  the  citizens 
the  cabin  passengers,  officers,  and  part  of  the  crew  and  deck  passen- 
gers were  taken  ashore  and  removed  to  the  hotels  and  residences. 
Twenty-four  of  the  injured  were  lying  in  Holcomb's  dry-goods 
store  at  one  time,  where  they  received  every  attention  before  being 
removed  to  more  comfortable  places." 

A  list  of  the  names  followed,  whereby  it  appeared  that  of 
the  seventeen  dead,  one  was  the  barkeeper ;  and  among  the 
forty-seven  wounded,  were  the  captain,  chief  mate,  second 
mate,  and  second  and  third  clerks  ;  also  Mr.  Lem.  S.  Gray, 
pilot,  and  several  members  of  the  crew. 

In  answer  to  a  private  telegram,  we  learned  that  none  of 
these  was  severely  hurt,  except  Mr.  Gray.     Letters  received 


398 


A   SAD  DISASTER. 


afterward  confirmed  this  news,  and  said  that  Mr.  Gray  was 
improving  and  would  get  well.  Later  letters  spoke  less 
hopefully  of  his  case ;  and  finally  came  one  announcing  his 
death.  A  good  man,  a  most  companionable  and  manly  man, 
and  worthy  of  a  kindlier  fate. 


CHAPTER  XXXVIII. 


THE   HOUSE  BEAUTIFUL. 


WE  took  passage  in  a  Cincinnati  boat  for  New  Orleans  ; 
or  on  a  Cincinnati  boat — either  is  correct;  the  former 
is  the  eastern  form  of  putting  it,  the  latter  the  western. 

Mr.  Dickens  declined  to  agree  that  the  Mississippi  steam- 
boats were  "  magnificent,"  or  that  they  were  "  floating  pala- 
ces," —  terms  which  had  always  been  applied  to  them  ;  terms 
which  did  not  over-express  the  admiration  with  which  the 
people  viewed  them. 

Mr.  Dickens's  position  was  unassailable,  possibly ;  the 
people's  position  was  certainly  unassailable.  If  Mr.  Dickens 
was  comparing  these  boats  with  the  crown  jewels  ;  or  with 
the  Taj,  or  with  the  Matterhorn ;  or  with  some  other  price- 
less or  wonderful  thing  which  he  had  seen,  they  were  not 
magnificent — he  was  right.  The  people  compared  them 
with  what  they  had  seen ;  and,  thus  measured,  thus  judged, 
the  boats  were  magnificent  —  the  term  was  the  correct  one, 
it  was  not  at  all  too  strong.  The  people  were  as  right  as 
was  Mr.  Dickens.  The  steamboats  were  finer  than  anything 
on  shore.  Compared  with  superior  dwelling-houses  and  first 
class  hotels  in  the  Yalley,  thej  were  indubitably  magnifi- 
cent, they  were  "  palaces."  To  a  few  people  living  in  New 
Orleans  and  St.  Louis,  they  were  not  magnificent,  perhaps ; 
not  palaces ;  but  to  the  great  majority  of  those  populations, 
and  to  the  entire  populations  spread  over  both  banks  between 
Baton  Rouge  and  St.  Louis,  they  were  palaces ;  they  tallied 
with  the  citizen's  dream  of  what  magnificence  was,  and 
satisfied  it. 


400  THE   GOOD   OLD  TIMES. 

Every  town  and  village  along  that  vast  stretch  of  double 
river-frontage  had  a  best  dwelling,  finest  dwelling,  mansion, 

—  the  home  of  its  wealthiest  and  most  conspicuous  citizen. 
It  is  easy  to  describe  it :  large  grassy  yard,  with  paling  fence 
painted  white  —  in  fair  repair  ;  brick  walk  from  gate  to 
door ;  big,  square,  two-story  "  frame  "  house,  painted  white 
and  porticoed  like  a  Grecian  temple  —  with  this  difference, 
that  the  imposing  fluted  columns  and  Corinthian  capitals 
were  a  pathetic  sham,  being  made  of  white  pine,  and 
painted  ;  iron  knocker  ;  brass  door  knob  —  discolored,  for 
lack  of  polishing.  Within,  an  uncarpeted  hall,  of  planed 
boards  ;  opening  out  of  it,  a  parlor,  fifteen  feet  by  fifteen  — 
in  some  instances  five  or  ten  feet  larger  ;  ingrain  carpet ; 
mahogany  centre-table ;  lamp  on  it,  with  green-paper  shade 

—  standing  on  a  gridiron,  so  to  speak,  made  of  high-colored 
yarns,  by  the  young  ladies  of  the  house,  and  called  a  lamp- 
mat;  several  books,  piled  and  disposed,  with  cast-iron 
exactness,  according  to  an  inherited  and  unchangeable  plan; 
among  them,  Tupper,  much  pencilled ;  also,  "  Friendship's 
Offering,"  and  "  Affection's  Wreath,"  with  their  sappy 
inanities  illustrated  in  die-away  mezzotints ;  also,  Ossian ; 
"  Alonzo  and  Melissa  ; "  maybe  "  Ivanhoe  ;  "  also  "  Album," 
full  of  original  "  poetry "  of  the  Thou-hast-wounded-the- 
spirit-that-loved-thee  breed ;  two  or  three  goody-goody  works 
— "  Shepherd  of  Salisbury  Plain,"  etc. ;  current  number  of 
the  chaste  and  innocuous  Godey's  "  Lady's  Book,"  with 
painted  fashion-plate  of  wax-figure  women  with  mouths  all 
alike  —  lips  and  eyelids  the  same  size — each  five-foot  woman 
with  a  two-inch  wedge  sticking  from  under  her  dress  and 
letting-on  to  be  half  of  her  foot.  Polished  air-tight  stove 
(new  and  deadly  invention),  with  pipe  passing  through  a 
board  which  closes  up  the  discarded  good  old  fireplace.  On 
each  end  of  the  wooden  mantel,  over  the  fireplace,  a  large 
basket  of  peaches  and  other  fruits,  natural  size,  all  done  in 
plaster,  rudely,  or  in  wax,  and  painted  to  resemble  the  origi- 
nals —  which  they  don't.     Over  middle  of  mantel,  engraving 


AN   INTERIOR. 


FRANTIC  WORKS  OF  ART.  403 

—  Washington  Crossing  the  Delaware ;  on  the  wall  by  the 
door,  copy  of  it  done  in  thunder-and-lightning  crewels  by 
one  of  the  young  ladies  —  work  of  art  which  would  have 
made  Washington  hesitate  about  crossing,  if  he  could  have 
foreseen  what  advantage  was  going  to  be  taken  of  it.     Piano 

—  kettle  in  disguise  — with  music,  bound  and  unbound,  piled 
on  it,  and  on  a  stand  near  by :  Battle  of  Prague ;  Bird 
Waltz ;  Arkansas  Traveller ;  Rosin  the  Bow ;  Marseilles 
Hymn  ;  On  a  Lone  Barren  Isle  (St.  Helena) ;  The  Last 
Link  is  Broken  ;  She  wore  a  Wreath  of  Roses  the  Night 
when  last  we  met ;  Go,  forget  me,  Why  should  Sorrow 
o'er  that  Brow  a  Shadow  fling;  Hours  there  were  to 
Memory  Dearer ;  Long,  Long  Ago ;  Days  of  Absence ;  A 
Life  on  the  Ocean  Wave,  a  Home  on  the  Rolling  Deep  ;  Bird 
at  Sea ;  and  spread  open  on  the  rack,  where  the  plaintive 
singer  has  left  it,  ifo-holl  on,  silver  moo-hoon,  guide  the 
trav-el-levr  his  way,  etc.  Tilted  pensively  against  the  piano, 
a  guitar  —  guitar  capable  of  playing  the  Spanish  Fandango 
by  itself,  if  you  give  it  a  start.  Frantic  work  of  art  on  the 
wall  —  pious  motto,  done  on  the  premises,  sometimes  in 
colored  yarns,  sometimes  in  faded  grasses :  progenitor  of  the 
"  God  Bless  Our  Home  "  of  modern  commerce.  Framed  in 
black  mouldings  on  the  wall,  other  works  of  art,  conceived 
and  committed  on  the  premises,  by  the  young  ladies ;  being 
grim  black-and-white  crayons ;  landscapes,  mostly :  lake, 
solitary  sail-boat,  petrified  clouds,  pre-geological  trees  on 
shore,  anthracite  precipice ;  name  of  criminal  conspicuous 
in  the  corner.  Lithograph,  Napoleon  Crossing  the  Alps. 
Lithograph,  The  Grave  at  St.  Helena.  Steel-plates,  Trum- 
bull's Battle  of  Bunker  Hill,  and  the  Sally  from  Gibraltar. 
Copper-plates,  Moses  Smiting  the  Rock,  and  Return  of  the 
Prodigal  Son.  In  big  gilt  frame,  slander  of  the  family  in 
oil :  papa  holding  a  book  ("  Constitution  of  the  United 
States");  guitar  leaning  against  mamma,  blue  ribbons  flut- 
tering from  its  neck ;  the  young  ladies,  as  children,  in  slippers 
and  scalloped  pantelettes,  one  embracing  toy  horse,  the  other 


404  ANCESTRAL   RELICS. 

beguiling  kitten  with  ball  of  yarn,  and  both  simpering  up  at 
mamma,  who  simpers  back.  These  persons  all  fresh,  raw,  and 
red  —  apparently  skinned.  Opposite,  in  gilt  frame,  grandpa 
and  grandma,  at  thirty  and  twenty-two,  stiff,  old-fashioned, 
high-collared,  puff-sleeved,  glaring  pallidly  out  from  a  back- 
ground of  solid  Egyptian  night.  Under  a  glass  French  clock 
dome,  large  bouquet  of  stiff  flowers  done  in  corpsy  white  wax. 
Pyramidal  what-not  in  the  corner,  the  shelves  occupied 
chiefly  with  bric-a-brac  of  the  period,  disposed  with  an  eye 
to  best  effect :  shell,  with  the  Lord's  Prayer  carved  on  it ; 
another  shell  —  of  the  long-oval  sort,  narrow,  straight  orifice, 
three  inches  long,  running  from  end  to  end  —  portrait  of 
Washington  carved  on  it ;  not  well  done ;  the  shell  had 
Washington's  mouth,  originally  —  artist  should  have  built  to 
that.  These  two  are  memorials  of  the  long-ago  bridal  trip 
to  New  Orleans  and  the  French  Market.  Other  bric-a-brac  : 
Californian  "  specimens"  —  quartz,  with  gold  wart  adhering; 
old  Guinea-gold  locket,  with  circlet  of  ancestral  hair  in  it ; 
Indian  arrow-heads,  of  flint ;  pair  of  bead  moccasins,  from 
uncle  who  crossed  the  Plains ;  three  "  alum "  baskets  of 
various  colors  —  being  skeleton-frame  of  wire,  clothed-on 
with  cubes  of  crystallized  alum  in  the  rock-candy  style  — 
works  of  art  which  were  achieved  by  the  young  ladies ;  their 
doubles  and  duplicates  to  be  found  upon  all  what-nots  in  the 
land ;  convention  of  desiccated  bugs  and  butterflies  pinned  to 
a  card ;  painted  toy-dog,  seated  upon  bellows-attachment  — 
drops  its  under  jaw  and  squeaks  when  pressed  upon ;  sugar- 
candy  rabbit  —  limbs  and  features  merged  together,  not 
strongly  defined ;  pewter  presidential-campaign  medal ;  min- 
iature card-board  wood-sawyer,  to  be  attached  to  the  stove- 
pipe and  operated  by  the  heat;  small  Napoleon,  done  in  wax; 
spread-open  daguerreotypes  of  dim  children,  parents,  cousins, 
aunts,  and  friends,  in  all  attitudes  but  customary  ones ;  no 
templed  portico  at  back,  and  manufactured  landscape  stretch- 
ing away  in  the  distance  —  that  came  in  later,  with  the 
photograph ;    all  these  vague  figures  lavishly  chained  and 


STORE-CLOTHES  AND  FURNITURE. 


405 


ringed  —  metal  indicated  and  secured  from  doubt  by  stripes 
and  splashes  of  vivid  gold  bronze ;  all  of  them  too  much 
combed,  too  much  fixed  up ;  and  all  of  them  uncomfortable 
in  inflexible  Sunday-clothes  of  a  pattern  which  the  specta- 
tor cannot  realize  could 
ever  have  been  in  fash- 
ion ;  husband  and  wife 
generally  grouped  to- 
gether— 
husband 


sitting,  wife  standing,  with 
hand  on  his  shoulder  —  and 
both  preserving,  all  these  fad- 
ing years,  some  traceable  effect 
of  the  daguerreotypist's  brisk 
"  Now  smile,  if  you  please ! " 
Bracketed  over  what-not  — 
place  of  special  sacredness- — 
an  outrage  in  water-color,  done 
by  the  young  niece  that  came 
on  a  visit  long  ago,  and  died. 
Pity,  too;  for  she  might 
have  repented  of  this  in  time. 
Horse-hair  chairs,  horse-hair 
sofa  which  keeps  sliding  from 
under  you.  Window  shades, 
of  oil  stuff,  with  milk-maids  and  ruined  castles  stencilled  on 
them  in  fierce  colors.     Lambrequins  dependent  from  gaudy 


CLEANSING   THEMSELVES. 


406  STEAMBOAT  SPLENDORS. 

boxings  of  beaten  tin,  gilded.  Bedrooms  with  rag  carpets ; 
bedsteads  of  the  "  corded  "  sort,  with  a  sag  in  the  middle, 
the  cords  needing  tightening ;  snuffy  feather-bed  —  not  aired 
often  enough ;  cane-seat  chairs,  splint-bottomed  rocker ; 
looking-glass  on  wall,  school-slate  size,  veneered  frame ; 
inherited  bureau ;  wash-bowl  and  pitcher,  possibly  —  but  not 
certainly ;  brass  candlestick,  tallow  candle,  snuffers.  Nothing 
else  in  the  room.  Not  a  bathroom  in  the  house ;  and  no 
visitor  likely  to  come  along  who  has  ever  seen  one. 

That  was  the  residence  of  the-  principal  citizen,  all  the 
way  from  the  suburbs  of  New  Orleans  to  the  edge  of  St. 
"Louis.  When  he  stepped  aboard  a  big  fine  steamboat,  he 
entered  a  new  and  marvellous  world :  chimney-tops  cut  to 
counterfeit  a  spraying  crown  of  plumes  —  and  maybe  painted 
red ;  pilot-house,  hurricane  deck,  boiler-deck  guards,  all 
garnished  with  white  wooden  filagree  work  of  fanciful  pat- 
terns ;  gilt  acorns  topping  the  derricks  ;  gilt  deer-horns  over 
the  big  bell ;  gaudy  symbolical  picture  on  the  paddle-box, 
possibly  ;  big  roomy  boiler-deck,  painted  blue,  and  furnished 
with  Windsor  arm-chairs  ;  inside,  a  far  receding  snow-white 
"  cabin ; "  porcelain  knob  and  oil-picture  on  every  state-room 
door ;  curving  patterns  of  filagree-work  touched  up  with 
gilding,  stretching  overhead  all  down  the  converging  vista ; 
big  chandeliers  every  little  way,  each  an  April  shower  of 
glittering  glass-drops ;  lovely  rainbow-light  falling  every- 
where from  the  colored  glazing  of  the  skylights ;  the  whole 
a  long-drawn,  resplendent  tunnel,  a  bewildering  and  soul- 
satisfying  spectacle !  in  the  ladies'  cabin  a  pink  and  white 
Wilton  carpet,  as  soft  as  mush,  and  glorified  with  a  ravish- 
ing pattern  of  gigantic  flowers.  Then  the  Bridal  Chamber 
—  the  animal  that  invented  that  idea  was  still  alive  and 
unhanged,  at  that  day  —  Bridal  Chamber  whose  pretentious 
flummery  was  necessarily  overawing  to  the  now  tottering 
intellect  of  that  hosannahing  citizen.  Every  state-room  had 
its  couple  of  cosy  clean  bunks,  and  perhaps  a  looking-glass 
and  a  snug  closet ;  and  sometimes  there  was  even  a  wash- 


THEN  AND  NOW. 


40T 


bowl  and  pitcher,  and  part  of  a  towel  which  could  be  told 
from  mosquito  netting  by  an  expert — though  generally  these 
things  were  absent,  and  the  shirt-sleeved  passengers  cleansed 
themselves  at  a  long  row  of  stationary  bowls  in  the  barber 
shop,  where  were  also  public  towels,  public  combs,  and  public 
soap. 

Take  the  steamboat  which  I  have  just  described,  and  you 
have  her  in  her  highest  and  finest,  and  most  pleasing,  and 
comfortable,  and  satisfactory  estate.  Now  cake  her  over 
with  a  layer  of  ancient  and  obdurate  dirt,  and  you  have  the 
Cincinnati  steamer  awhile  ago  referred  to.  Not  all  over  — 
only  inside ;  for  she  was  ably  officered  in  all  departments 
except  the  steward's. 

But  wash  that  boat  and  repaint  her,  and  she  would  be 
about  the  counterpart  of  the  most  complimented  boat  of  the 
old  flush  times :  for  the  steamboat  architecture  of  the  West 
has  undergone  no  change ;  neither  has  steamboat  furniture 
and  ornamentation  undergone  any. 


CHAPTER    XXXIX. 

MANUFACTURES  AND  MISCREANTS. 

WHERE  the  river,  in  the  Vicksburg  region,  used  to  be 
corkscrewed,  it  is  now  comparatively  straight  — 
made  so  by  cut-off ;  a  former  distance  of  seventy  miles  is 
reduced  to  thirty-five.  It  is  a  change  which  threw  Vicks- 
burg's  neighbor,  Delta,  Louisiana,  out  into  the  country  and 
ended  its  career  as  a  river  town.  Its  whole  river-frontage  is 
now  occupied  by  a  vast  sand-bar,  thickly  covered  with  young 
trees  —  a  growth  which  will  magnify  itself  into  a  dense  for- 
est, by  and  by,  and  completely  hide  the  exiled  town. 

In  due  time  we  passed  Grand  Gulf  and  Rodney,  of  war 
fame,  and  reached  Natchez,  the  last  of  the  beautiful  hill- 
cities —  for  Baton  Rouge,  yet  to  come,  is  not  on  a  hill,  but 
only  on  high  ground.  Famous  Natchez-under-the-hill  has 
not  changed  notably  in  twenty  years  ;  in  outward  aspect  — 
judging  by  the  descriptions  of  the  ancient  procession  of 
foreign  tourists  —  it  has  not  changed  in  sixty  ;  for  it  is  still 
small,  straggling,  and  shabby.  It  had  a  desperate  reputation, 
morally,  in  the  old  keel-boating  and  early  steamboating  times 
—  plenty  of  drinking,  carousing,  fisticuffing,  and  killing 
there,  among  the  riff-raff  of  the  river,  in  those  days.  But 
Natchez-on-top-of-the-hill  is  attractive ;  has  always  been 
attractive.  Even  Mrs.  Trollope  (1827)  had  to  confess  its 
charms : 

"  At  one  or  two  points  the  wearisome  level  line  is  relieved  by 
Muffs,  as  they  call  the  short  intervals  of  high  ground.  The  town 
of  Natchez  is  beautifully  situated  on  one  of  those  high  spots.  The 
contrast  that  its  bright  green  hill  forms  with  the  dismal  line  of  black 


NATCHEZ. 


409 


forest  that  stretches  on  every  side,  the  abundant  growth  of  the  paw- 
paw, palmetto  and  orange,  the  copious  variety  of  sweet-scented  flowers 
that  flourish  there,  all  make  it  appear  like  an  oasis  in  the  desert. 
Natchez  is  the  furthest  point  to  the  north  at  which  oranges  ripen  in 
the  open  air,  or  endure  the  winter  without  shelter.  With  the  excep- 
tion of  this  sweet  spot,  I  thought  all  the  little  towns  and  villages 
we  passed  wretched-looking  in  the  extreme." 

Natchez,  like  her  near  and  far  river  neighbors,  has  rail- 
ways now,  and  is  adding  to  them  —  pushing  them  hither 


NATCHEZ. 

and  thither  into  all  rich  outlying  regions  that  are  naturally 
tributary  to  her.  And  like  Vicksburg  and  New  Orleans,  she 
has  her  ice-factory ;  she  makes  thirty  tons  of  ice  a  day.  In 
Vicksburg  and  Natchez,  in  my  time,  ice  was  jewelry ;  none 
but  the  rich  could  wear  it.  But  anybody  and  everybody  can 
have  it  now.  I  visited  one  of  the  ice-factories  in  New 
Orleans,  to  see  what  the  polar  regions  might  look  like  when 
lugged  into  the  edge  of  the  tropics.     But  there  was  nothing 


410  ICE-MAKING. 

striking  in  the  aspect  of  the  place.  It  was  merely  a  spacious 
house,  with  some  innocent  steam  machinery  in  one  end  of  it 
and  some  big  porcelain  pipes  running  here  and  there.  No, 
not  porcelain  —  they  merely  seemed  to  be;  they  were  iron, 
but  the  ammonia  which  was  being  breathed  through  them 
had  coated  them  to  the  thickness  of  your  hand  with  solid 
milk-white  ice.  It  ought  to  have  melted ;  for  one  did  not 
require  winter  clothing  in  that  atmosphere :  but  it  did  not 
melt ;   the  inside  of  the  pipe  was  too  cold. 

Sunk  into  the  floor  were  numberless  tin  boxes,  a  foot 
square  and  two  feet  long,  and  open  at  the  top  end.  These 
were  full  of  clear  water;  and  around  each  box,  salt  and  other 
proper  stuff  was  packed ;  also,  the  ammonia  gases  were 
applied  to  the  water  in  some  way  which  will  always  remain 
a  secret  to  me,  because  I  was  not  able  to  understand  the 
process.  While  the  water  in  the  boxes  gradually  froze,  men 
gave  it  a  stir  or  two  with  a  stick  occasionally  —  to  liberate 
the  air-bubbles,  I  think.  Other  men  were  continually  lifting 
out  boxes  whose  contents  had  become  hard  frozen.  They 
gave  the  box  a  single  dip  into  a  vat  of  boiling  water,  to  melt 
the  block  of  ice  free  from  its  tin  coffin,  then  they  shot  the 
block  out  upon  a  platform  car,  and  it  was  ready  for  market. 
These  big  blocks  were  hard,  solid,  and  crystal-clear.  In 
certain  of  them,  big  bouquets  of  fresh  and  brilliant  tropical 
flowers  had  been  frozen-in ;  in  others,  beautiful  silken-clad 
French  dolls,  and  other  pretty  objects.  These  blocks  were  to 
be  set  on  end  in  a  platter,  in  the  centre  of  dinner-tables,  to 
cool  the  tropical  air ;  and  also  to  be  ornamental,  for  the 
flowers  and  things  imprisoned  in  them  could  be  seen  as 
through  plate  glass.  I  was  told  that  this  factory  could 
retail  its  ice,  by  wagon,  throughout  New  Orleans,  in  the 
humblest  dwelling  house  quantities,  at  six  or  seven  dollars 
a  ton,  and  make  a  sufficient  profit.  This  being  the  case, 
there  is  business  for  ice  factories  in  the  North ;  for  we  get 
ice  on  no  such  terms  there,  if  one  take  less  than  three 
hundred  and  fifty  pounds  at  a  delivery. 


ENTER  DRUMMERS. 


411 


The  Rosalie  Yarn  Mill,  of  Natchez,  has  a  capacity  of 
6,000  spindles  and  160  looms,  and  employs  100  hands.  The 
Natchez  Cotton  Mills  Company  began  operations  four  years 
ago  in  a  two-story  building  of  50  X  190  feet,  with  4,000 
spindles  and  128  looms ;  capital  1105,000,  all  subscribed  in 
the  town.  Two  years  later,  the  same  stockholders  increased 
their  capital  to  $225,000  ;  added  a  third  story  to  the  mill, 
increased  its  length  to  317  feet ;  added  machinery  to  increase 
the  capacity  to  10,300  spindles  and  304  looms.  The  company 
now  employ  250 
operatives,  many  of 
whom  are  citizens 
of  Natchez.  "  The 
mill  works  5,000 
bales  of  cotton  an- 
nually and  manu- 
factures the  best 
standard  quality  of 
brown  shirtings  and 
sheetings  and  drills, 
turning  out  5,000,- 
000  yards  of  these 
goods  per  year."  1 
A  close  corporation 
—  stock  held  at 
$5,000  per  share, 
but  none  in  the 
market. 

The  changes  in  the  Mississippi  River  are  great  and  strange, 
yet  were  to  be  expected ;  but  I  was  not  expecting  to  live  to 
see  Natchez  and  these  other  river  towns  become  manufactur- 
ing strongholds  and  railway  centres. 

Speaking  of  manufactures  reminds  me  of  a  talk  upon  that 
topic  which  I  heard  —  which  I  overheard  —  on  board  the 
Cincinnati  boat.     I  awoke  out  of  a  fretted  sleep,  with  a  dull 


DKTJMMEKS. 


1  "  New  Orleans  Times-Democrat,"  Aug.  26,  1882. 


412  BRAGGING   AT   A  MARK. 

confusion  of  voices  in  my  ears.  I  listened  —  two  men  were 
talking  ;  subject,  apparently,  the  great  inundation.  I  looked 
out  through  the  open  transom.  The  two  men  were  eating  a 
late  breakfast ;  sitting  opposite  each  other ;  nobody  else 
around.  They  closed  up  the  inundation  with  a  few  words  — 
having  used  it,  evidently,  as  a  mere  ice-breaker  and  acquaint- 
anceship-breeder—  then  they  dropped  into  business.  It 
soon  transpired  that  they  were  drummers  —  one  belonging 
in  Cincinnati,  the  other  in  New  Orleans.  Brisk  men,  ener- 
getic of  movement  and  speech ;  the  dollar  their  god,  how  to 
get  it  their  religion. 

"  Now  as  to  this  article,"  said  Cincinnati,  slashing  into  the 
ostensible  butter  and  holding  forward  a  slab  of  it  on  his  knife- 
blade,  "  it's  from  our  house  ;  look  at  it  —  smell  of  it —  taste 
it.  Put  any  test  on  it  you  want  to.  Take  your  own  time  — 
no  hurry  —  make  it  thorough.  There  now  —  what  do  you 
say  ?  butter,  ain't  it?  Not  by  a  thundering  sight  —  it 's  oleo- 
margarine !  Yes,  sir,  that 's  what  it  is  —  oleomargarine. 
You  can't  tell  it  from  butter ;  by  George,  an  expert  can't. 
It  's  from  our  house.  We  supply  most  of  the  boats  in  the 
West ;  there  's  hardly  a  pound  of  butter  on  one  of  them.  We 
are  crawling  right  along  — jumping  right  along  is  the  word. 
We  are  going  to  have  that  entire  trade.  Yes,  and  the  hotel 
trade,  too.  You  are  going  to  see  the  day,  pretty  soon,  when 
you  can't  find  an  ounce  of  butter  to  bless  yourself  with,  in  any 
hotel  in  the  Mississippi  and  Ohio  Valleys,  outside  of  the 
biggest  cities.  Why,  we  are  turning  out  oleomargarine  now 
by  the  thousands  of  tons.  And  we  can  sell  it  so  dirt-cheap 
that  the  whole  country  has  got  to  take  it  —  can't  get  around 
it  you  see.  Butter  don't  stand  any  show  —  there  ain't  any 
chance  for  competition.  Butter  's  had  its  day  —  and  from 
this  out,  butter  goes  to  the  wall.  There 's  more  money  in 
oleomargarine  than  —  why,  you  can't  imagine  the  business 
we  do.  I've  stopped  in  every  town,  from  Cincinnati  to 
Natchez  ;  and  I  've  sent  home  big  orders  from  every  one  of 
them." 


OILY   VILLAINS. 


413 


And  so-forth  and   so-on,  for  ten  minutes  longer,  in    the 
same  fervid  strain.     Then  New  Orleans  piped  up  and  said:  — 

"  Yes,  it 's  a  first-rate 
imitation,  that 's  a  cer- 
tainty; but  it  ain't  the 
only  one  around  that's 
first-rate.     For   instance, 


SMELL   THEM,    TASTE    THEM. 


they  make   olive-oil   out  of   cotton-seed  oil,  now-a-days,  so 
that  you  can't  tell  them  apart." 

"  Yes,  that 's  so,"  responded  Cincinnati,  "  and  it  was  a  tip- 
top business  for  a  while.  They  sent  it  over  and  brought  it 
back  from  Prance  and  Italy,  with  the  United  States  custom- 
house mark  on  it  to  indorse  it  for  genuine,  and  there  was  no 
end  of  cash  in  it ;  but  France  and  Italy  broke  up  the  game 
—  of  course  they  naturally  would.  Cracked  on  such  a 
rattling  impost  that  cotton-seed  olive-oil  could  n't  stand  the 
raise ;  had  to  hang  up  and  quit." 


414  DRUMMERS  EXEUNT. 

"  Oh,  it  did,  did  it  ?  You  wait  here  a  minute." 

Goes  to  his  state-room,  brings  back  a  couple  of  long  bottles, 
and  takes  out  the  corks  —  says  :  — 

"  There  now,  smell  them,  taste  them,  examine  the  bottles, 
inspect  the  labels.  One  of  'm's  from  Europe,  the  other's 
never  been  out  of  this  country.  One  's  European  olive-oil, 
the  other 's  American  cotton-seed  olive-oil.  Tell 'm  apart  ? 
'Course  you  can't.  Nobody  can.  People  that  want  to,  can  go 
to  the  expense  and  trouble  of  shipping  their  oils  to  Europe 
and  back  —  it 's  their  privilege  ;  but  our  firm  knows  a  trick 
worth  six  of  that.  We  turn  out  the  whole  thing  —  clean 
from  the  word  go  —  in  our  factory  in  New  Orleans  :  labels, 
bottles,  oil,  everything.  Well,  no,  not  labels  :  been  buying 
them  abroad  —  get  them  dirt-cheap  there.  You  see,  there  's 
just  one  little  wee  speck,  essence,  or  whatever  it  is,  in  a 
gallon  of  cotton-seed  oil,  that  gives  it  a  smell,  or  a  flavor,  or 
something  —  get  that  out,  and  you  're  all  right  —  perfectly 
easy  then  to  turn  the  oil  into  any  kind  of  oil  you  want  to, 
and  there  ain't  anybody  that  can  detect  the  true  from  the 
false.  Well,  we  know  how  to  get  that  one  little  particle  out 
—  and  we  're  the  only  firm  that  does.  And  we  turn  out  an 
olive-oil  that  is  just  simply  perfect  —  undetectable  !  We  are 
doing  a  ripping  trade,  too — as  I  could  easily  show  you  by 
my  order-book  for  this  trip.  Maybe  you  '11  butter  every- 
body's bread  pretty  soon,  but  we  '11  cotton-seed  his  salad 
for  him  from  the  Gulf  to  Canada,  and  that 's  a  dead-certain 
thing." 

Cincinnati  glowed  and  flashed  with  admiration.  The  two 
scoundrels  exchanged  business-cards,  and  rose.  As  they 
left  the  table,  Cincinnati  said, — 

"  But  you  have  to  have  custom-house  marks,  don't  you  ? 
How  do  you  manage  that  ? " 

I  did  not  catch  the  answer. 

Wef  passed  Port  Hudson,  scene  of  two  of  the  most  terrific 
episodes  of  the  war  —  the  night-battle  there  between  Far- 
ragut's  fleet  and  the  Confederate  land  batteries,  April  14th, 


PORT-HUDSON   MEMORIES. 


415 


1863 ;  and  the  memorable  land  battle,  two  months  later, 
which  lasted  eight  hours  —  eight  hours  of  exceptionally  fierce 
and  stubborn  fighting — and  ended,  finally,  in  the  repulse  of 
the  Union  forces  with  great  slaughter. 


CHAPTER   XL. 

CASTLES  AND   CULTURE. 

BATON  ROUGE  was  clothed  in  flowers,  like  a  bride- 
no,  much  more  so ;  like  a  greenhouse.  For  we  were 
in  the  absolute  South  now  —  no  modifications,  no  compro- 
mises, no  half-way  measures.  The  magnolia-trees  in  the 
Capitol  grounds  were  lovely  and  fragrant,  with  their  dense 
rich  foliage  and  huge  snow-ball  blossoms.  The  scent  of  the 
flower  is  very  sweet,  but  you  want  distance  on  it,  because  it 
is  so  powerful.  They  are  not  good  bedroom  blossoms  — 
they  might  suffocate  one  in  his  sleep.  We  were  certainly  in 
the  South  at  last ;  for  here  the  sugar  region  begins,  and  the 
plantations  —  vast  green  levels,  with  sugar-mill  and  negro 
quarters  clustered  together  in  the  middle  distance  —  were  in 
view.  And  there  was  a  tropical  sun  overhead  and  a  tropical 
swelter  in  the  air. 

And  at  this  point,  also,  begins  the  pilot's  paradise :  a  wide 
river  hence  to  New  Orleans,  abundance  of  water  from  shore 
to  shore,  and  no  bars,  snags,  sawyers,  or  wrecks  in  his  road. 

Sir  Walter  Scott  is  probably  responsible  for  the  Capitol 
building ;  for  it  is  not  conceivable  that  this  little  sham  castle 
would  ever  have  been  built  if  he  had  not  run  the  people  mad, 
a  couple  of  generations  ago,  with  his  mediaeval  romances. 
The  South  has  not  yet  recovered  from  the  debilitating  influ- 
ence of  his  books. .  Admiration  of  his  fantastic  heroes  and 
their  grotesque  "  chivalry  "  doings  and  romantic  juvenilities 
still  survives  here,  in  an  atmosphere  in  which  is  already  per- 
ceptible the  wholesome  and  practical  nineteenth-century 
smell  of  cotton-factories  and  locomotives  :  and  traces  of  its 


A  FEMALE   INSTITUTE. 


417 


COLUMBIA   FEMALE    INSTITUTE. 


inflated  language  and  other  windy  humbuggeries  survive 
along  with  it.  It  is  pathetic  enough,  that  a  whitewashed 
castle,  with  turrets  and  things  —  materials  all  ungenuine 
within  and  without,  pretending  to  be  what  they  are  not  — 
should  ever  have  been  built  in  this  otherwise  honorable 
place  ;  but  it  is  much  more  pathetic  to  see  this  architectural 
falsehood  undergoing  restoration  and  perpetuation  in  our 
day,  when  it  would  have 
been  so  easy  to  let  dyna- 
mite finish  what  a  chari- 
table fire  began,  and  then 
devote  this  restoration- 
money  to  the  building  of 
something  genuine. 

Baton  Rouge  has  no 
patent  on  imitation  cas- 
tles, however,  and  no 
monopoly  of  them.  Here 
is  a  picture    from    the 

advertisement  of  the  "  Female  Institute  "  of  Columbia,  Ten- 
nessee. The  following  remark  is  from  the  same  advertise- 
ment :  — 

"  The  Institute  building  has  long  been  famed  as  a  model  of  strik- 
ing and  beautiful  architecture.  Visitors  are  charmed  with  its 
resemblance  to  the  old  castles  of  song  and  story,  with  its  towers, 
turreted  walls,  and  ivy-mantled  porches." 

Keeping  school  in  a  castle  is  a  romantic  thing ;  as  roman- 
tic as  keeping  hotel  in  a  castle. 

By  itself  the  imitation  castle  is  doubtless  harmless,  and 
well  enough ;  but  as  a  symbol  and  breeder  and  sustainer  of 
maudlin  Middle-Age  romanticism  here  in  the  midst  of  the 
plainest  and  sturdiest  and  infinitely  greatest  and  worthiest 
of  all  the  centuries  the  world  has  seen,  it  is  necessarily  a 
hurtful  thing  and  a  mistake. 

Here  is  an  extract  from  the  prospectus  of  a  Kentucky 
"  Female  College."     Female  college   sounds   well   enough  ; 

27 


418  EXCHANGE  OF  COURTESIES. 

but  since  the  phrasing  it  in  that  unjustifiable  way  was  done 
purely  in  the  interest  of  brevity,  it  seems  to  me  that  she-col- 
lege would  have  been  still  better  —  because  shorter,  and 
means  the  same  thing :  that  is,  if  either  phrase  means  any- 
thing at  all : — 

"  The  president  is  southern  by  birth,  by  rearing,  by  education, 
and  by  sentiment ;  the  teachers  are  all  southern  in  sentiment,  and 
with  the  exception  of  those  born  in  Europe  were  born  and  raised 
in  the  south.  Believing  the  southern  to  be  the  highest  type  of 
civilization  this   continent  has  seen,1  the   young  ladies  are   trained 

1  Illustrations  of  it  thoughtlessly  omitted  by  the  advertiser : 
Knoxville,  Tenn.,  October  19.  —  This  morning  a  few  minutes  after  ten 
o'clock,  General  Joseph  A.  Mabry,  Thomas  O'Connor,  and  Joseph  A.  Mabiy, 
Jr.,  were  killed  in  a  shooting  affray.  The  difficulty  began  yesterday  afternoon 
by  General  Mabry  attacking  Major  O'Connor  and  threatening  to  kill  him. 
This  was  at  the  fair  grounds,  and  O'Connor  told  Mabry  that  it  was  not  the 
place  to  settle  their  difficulties.  Mabry  then  told  O'Connor  he  should  not  live. 
It  seems  that  Mabry  was  armed  and  O'Connor  was  not.  The  cause  of  the 
difficulty  was  an  old  feud  about  the  transfer  of  some  property  from  Mabry  to 
O'Connor.  Later  in  the  afternoon  Mabry  sent  word  to  O'Connor  that  he 
would  kill  him  on  sight.  This  morning  Major  O'Connor  was  standing  in  the 
door  of  the  Mechanics'  National  Bank,  of  which  he  was  president.  General 
Mabry  and  another  gentleman  walked  down  Gay  Street  on  the  opposite  side 
from  the  bank.  O'Connor  stepped  into  the  bank,  got  a  shot  gun,  took  deliber- 
ate aim  at  General  Mabry  and  fired.  Mabry  fell  dead,  being  shot  in  the  left 
side.  As  he  fell  O'Connor  fired  again,  the  shot  taking  effect  in  Mabry's  thigh. 
O'Connor  then  reached  into  the  bank  and  got  another  shot  gun.  About  this  time 
Joseph  A.  Mabry,  Jr.,  son  of  General  Mabry,  came  rushing  down  the  street, 
unseen  by  O'Connor  until  within  forty  feet,  when  the  young  man  fired  a  pistol, 
the  shot  taking  effect  in  O'Connor's  right  breast,  passing  through  the  body 
near  the  heart.  The  instant  Mabry  shot,  O'Connor  turned  and  fired,  the  load 
taking  effect  in  young  Mabry's  right  breast  and  side.  Mabry  fell  pierced  with 
twenty  buckshot,  and  almost  instantlv  O'Connor  fell  dead  without  a  struggle. 
Mabry  tried  to  rise,  but  fell  back  dead.  The  whole  tragedy  occurred  within 
two  minutes,  and  neither  of  the  three  spoke  after  he  was  shot.  General  Mabry 
had  about  thirty  buckshot  in  his  body.  A  bystander  was  painfully  wounded  in 
the  thigh  with  a  buckshot,  and  another  was  wounded  in  the  arm.  Four  other 
men  had  their  clothing  pierced  by  buckshot.  The  affair  caused  great  excite- 
ment, and  Gay  Street  was  thronged  with  thousands  of  people.  General  Mabry 
and  his  son  Joe  were  acquitted  only  a  few  days  ago  of  the  murder  of  Moses 
Lusby  and  Don  Lusby,  father  and  son,  whom  they  killed  a  few  weeks  ago. 
Will  Mabry  was  killed  by  Don  Lusby  last  Christmas.     Major  Thomas  O'Con- 


SOUTHERN   PATRONS   INVITED.  419 

according  to  the  southern  ideas  of  delicacy,  refinement,  womanhood, 
religion,  and  propriety  ;  hence  we  offer  a  first-class  female  college 
for  the  south  and  solicit  southern  patronage." 

What,  warder,  ho  !  the  man  that  can  blow  so  complacent 
a  blast  as  that,  probably  blows  it  from  a  castle. 

From  Baton  Rouge  to  New  Orleans,  the  great  sugar  plan- 
tations border  both  sides  of  the  river  all  the  way,  and  stretch 
their  league-wide  levels  back  to  the  dim  forest-walls  of 
bearded  cypress  in  the  rear.  Shores  lonely  no  longer. 
Plenty  of  dwellings  all  the  way,  on  both  banks  —  standing 
so  close  together,  for  long  distances,  that  the  broad  river 

nor  was  President  of  the  Mechanics'  National  Bank  here,  and  was  the  wealthi- 
est man  in  the  State.  —  Associated  Press  Telegram. 

One  day  last  month,  Professor  Sharpe,  of  the  Somerville,  Tenn.,  Female 
College,  "  a  quiet  and  gentlemanly  man,"  was  told  that  his  brother-in- 
law,  a  Captain  Burton,  had  threatened  to  kill  him.  Burton,  it  seems,  had 
already  killed  one  man  and  driven  his  knife  into  another.  The  Professor 
armed  himself  with  a  double-barrelled  shot  gun,  started  out  in  search  of  his 
brother-in-law,  found  him  playing  billiards  in  a  saloon,  and  blew  his  brains  out. 
The  "Memphis  Avalanche  "  reports  that  the  Professor's  course  met  with  pretty 
general  approval  in  the  community ;  knowing  that  the  law  was  powerless,  in 
the  actual  condition  of  public  sentiment,  to  protect  him,  he  protected  himself. 

About  the  same  time,  two  young  men  in  North  Carolina  quarrelled  about 
a  girl,  and  "  hostile  messages"  were  exchanged.  Friends  tried  to  reconcile 
them,  but  had  their  labor  for  their  pains.  On  the  24th  the  young  men  met  in 
the  public  highway.  One  of  them  had  a  heavy  club  in  his  hand,  the  other  an 
axe.  The  man  with  the  club  fought  desperately  for  his  life,  but  it  was  a  hope- 
less fight  from  the  first.  A  well-directed  blow  sent  his  club  whirling  out  of 
his  grasp,  and  the  next  moment  he  was  a  dead  man. 

About  the  same  time,  two  "highly  connected  "  young  Virginians,  clerks  in 
a  hardware  store  at  Charlottesville,  while  "skylarking,"  came  to  blows. 
Peter  Dick  threw  pepper  in  Charles  Roads's  eyes  ;  Roads  demanded  an  apol- 
ogy ;  Dick  refused  to  give  it,  and  it  was  agreed  that  a  duel  was  inevitable,  but 
a  difficulty  arose  ;  the  parties  had  no  pistols,  and  it  was  too  late  at  night  to 
procure  them.  One  of  them  suggested  that  butcher-knives  would  answer  the 
purpose,  and  the  other  accepted  the  suggestion;  the  result  was  that  Roads  fell  to 
the  floor  with  a  gasli  in  his  abdomen  that  may  or  may  not  prove  fatal.  If 
Dick  has  been  arrested,  the  news  has  not  reached  us.  He  "  expressed  deep 
regret,"  and  we  are  told  by  a  Staunton  correspondent  of  the  "Philadelphia 
Press  "  that  "  every  effort  has  been  made  to  hush  the  matter  up."  —  Extracts 
from  the  Public  Journals. 


420 


A   HAPPY  REGION. 


■*N 


\fa    «d 


4^1 


%Nf 


m 


m 


4 


m 


M 


•"^j/j 


lying  between  the  two  rows,  becomes 
a  sort  of  spacious  street.  A  most 
home-like  and  happy-looking  region. 
And  now  and  then  you  see  a  pil- 
lared and  porticoed  great  manor-house, 
embowered  in  trees.  Here  is  testi- 
mony of  one  or  two  of  the  procession 
of  foreign  tourists  that  filed  along 
here  half  a  century  ago.  Mrs.  Trol- 
lope  says : — 

"  The  unbroken  flatness  of  the  banks  of 
the  Mississippi  continued  unvaried  for  many 
miles  above  New  Orleans ;  but  the  grace- 
ful and  luxuriant  palmetto,  the  dark  and 
noble  ilex,  and  the  bright  orange,  were 
everywhere  to  be  seen,  and  it  was  many 
days  before  we  were  weary  of  looking  at 
them." 

Captain  Basil  Hall :  — 


-??C 


% 


"  The  district  of  country  winch  lies  ad- 
jacent to  the  Mississippi,  in  the  lower  parts 
of  Louisiana,  is  everywhere  thickly  peo- 
pled by  sugar  planters,  whose  showy 
houses,    gay    piazzas,     trig     gardens,    and 

numerous  slave-villages,  all  clean   and  neat,  gave  an  exceedingly 

thriving  air  to   the  river  scenery." 


THE   GRACEFUL  PALMETTO. 


UNHAPPY   TOURISTS.  421 

All  the  procession  paint  the  attractive  picture  in  the  same 
way.  The  descriptions  of  fifty  years  ago  do  not  need  to 
have  a  word  changed  in  order  to  exactly  describe  the  same 
region  as  it  appears  to-day  —  except  as  to  the  "  trigness  "  of 
the  houses.  The  whitewash  is  gone  from  the  negro  cabins 
now ;  and  many,  possibly  most,  of  the  big  mansions,  once  so 
shining  white,  have  worn  out  their  paint  and  have  a  decayed, 
neglected  look.  It  is  the  blight  of  the  war.  Twenty-one 
years  ago  everything  was  trim  and  trig  and  bright  along 
the  "  coast,"  just  as  it  had  been  in  1827,  as  described  by 
those  tourists. 

Unfortunate  tourists  !  People  humbugged  them  with  stu- 
pid and  silly  lies,  and  then  laughed  at  them  for  believing 
and  printing  the  same.  They  told  Mrs.  Trollope  that  the 
alligators  —  or  crocodiles,  as  she  calls  them  —  were  terrible 
creatures ;  and  backed  up  the  statement  with  a  blood-cur- 
dling account  of  how  one  of  these  slandered  reptiles  crept 
into  a  squatter  cabin  one  night,  and  ate  up  a  woman  and 
five  children.  The  woman,  by  herself,  would  have  satisfied 
any  ordinarily-impossible  alligator ;  but  no,  these  liars  must 
make  him  gorge  the  five  children  besides.  One  would  not 
imagine  that  jokers  of  this  robust  breed  would  be  sensitive 
—  but  they  were.  It  is  difficult,  at  this  day,  to  understand, 
and  impossible  to  justify,  the  reception  which  the  book  of 
the  grave,  honest,  intelligent,  gentle,  manly,  charitable,  well- 
meaning  Capt.  Basil  Hall  got.  Mrs.  Trollope's  account  of  it 
may  perhaps  entertain  the  reader ;  therefore  I  have  put  it 
in  the  Appendix.1 

1  See  Appendix  C. 


CHAPTER    XL! 


THE   METROPOLIS   OF   THE   SOUTH. 


T 


HE  approaches  to  New  Orleans  were  familiar ;  general 
aspects    were    unchanged.       When    one    goes    flying 


HIGH    WATER. 


through  London  along  a  railway  propped  in  the  air  on  tall 
arches,  he  may  inspect  miles  of  upper  bedrooms  through 
the  open  windows,  but  the  lower  half  of  the  houses  is  under 


RIVER  APPROACHES. 


423 


his  level  and  out  of  sight.  Similarly,  in  high-river  stage, 
in  the  New  Orleans  region,  the  water  is  up  to  the  top  of  the 
enclosing  levee-rim,  the  flat  country  behind  it  lies  low  — 
representing  the  bottom  of  a  dish  —  and  as  the  boat  swims 
along,  high  on  the  flood,  one  looks  down  upon  the  houses 
and  into  the  upper  windows.  There  is  nothing  but  that 
frail  breastwork  of  earth  between  the  people  and  destruc- 
tion. 

The  old  brick  salt-warehouses  clustered  at  the  upper  end 
of  the  city  looked  as  they  had  always  looked ;  warehouses 


THE   "WHaEVES. 


which  had  had  a  kind  of  Aladdin's  lamp  experience,  how- 
ever, since  I  had  seen  them  ;  for  when  the  war  broke  out 
the  proprietor  went  to  bed  one  night  leaving  them  packed 
with  thousands  of  sacks  of  vulgar  salt,  worth  a  couple  of 
dollars  a  sack,  and  got  up  in  the  morning  and  found  his 
mountain  of  salt  turned  into  a  mountain  of  gold,  so  to  speak, 


424  NEW  ORLEANS   ARCHITECTURE. 

so  suddenly  and  to  so  dizzy  a  height  had  the  war  news  sent 
up  the  price  of  the  article. 

The  vast  reach  of  plank  wharves  remained  unchanged, 
and  there  were  as  many  ships  as  ever :  but  the  long  array 
of  steamboats  had  vanished  ;  not  altogether,  of  course,  but 
not  much  of  it  was  left. 

The  city  itself  had  not  changed  —  to  the  eye.  It  had 
greatly  increased  in  spread  and  population,  but  the  look  of 
the  town  was  not  altered.  The  dust,  waste-paper-littered, 
was  still  deep  in  the  streets  ;  the  deep,  trough-like  gutters 
alongside  the  curb-stones  were  still  half  full  of  reposeful 
water  with  a  dusty  surface  ;  the  sidewalks  were  still  —  in 
the  sugar  and  bacon  region  —  incumbered  by  casks  and  bar- 
rels and  hogsheads  ;  the  great  blocks  of  austerely  plain  com- 
mercial houses  were  as  dusty-looking  as  ever. 

Canal  Street  was  finer,  and  more  attractive  and  stirring 
than  formerly,  with  its  drifting  crowds  of  people,  its  several 
processions  of  hurrying  street-cars,  and  —  toward  evening  — 
its  broad  second-story  verandas  crowded  with  gentlemen  and 
ladies  clothed  according  to  the  latest  mode. 

Not  that  there  is  any  "  architecture"  in  Canal  Street:  to 
speak  in  broad,  general  terms,  there  is  no  architecture  in 
New  Orleans,  except  in  the  cemeteries.  It  seems  a  strange 
thing  to  say  of  a  wealthy,  far-seeing,  and  energetic  city  of  a 
quarter  of  a  million  inhabitants,  but  it  is  true.  There  is  a 
huge  granite  U.  S.  Custom-house  —  costly  enough,  genuine 
enough,  but  as  a  decoration  it  is  inferior  to  a  gasometer.  It 
looks  like  a  state  prison.  But  it  was  built  before  the  war. 
Architecture  in  America  may  be  said  to  have  been  born  since 
the  war.  New  Orleans,  I  believe,  has  had  the  good  luck  — 
and  in  a  sense  the  bad  luck  —  to  have  had  no  great  fire  in 
late  years.  It  must  be  so.  If  the  opposite  had  been  the  case, 
I  think  one  would  be  able  to  tell  the  "  burnt  district "  by  the 
radical  improvement  in  its  architecture  over  the  old  forms. 
One  can  do  this  in  Boston  and  Chicago.  The  "  burnt  dis- 
trict "  of  Boston  was  commonplace  before  the  fire  ;  but  now 


CANAL  STREET. 


PROGRESS  AND   CHANGES.  427 

there  is  no  commercial  district  in  any  city  in  the  world  that 
can  surpass  it  —  or  perhaps  even  rival  it  —  in  beauty, .  ele- 
gance, and  tastefulness. 

However,  New  Orleans  has  begun  —  just  this  moment,  as 
one  may  say.  When  completed,  the  new  Cotton  Exchange 
will  be  a  stately  and  beautiful  building  ;  massive,  substantial, 
full  of  architectural  graces ;  no  shams  or  false  pretences  or 
uglinesses  about  it  anywhere.  To  the  city,  it  will  be  worth 
many  times  its  cost,  for  it  will  breed  its  species.  What 
has  been  lacking  hitherto,  was  a  model  to  build  toward ; 
something  to  educate  eye  and  taste ;  a  suggester,  so  to  speak. 

The  city  is  well  outfitted  with  progressive  men  —  thinking, 
sagacious,  long-headed  men.  The  contrast  between  the  spirit 
of  the  city  and  the  city's  architecture  is  like  the  contrast 
between  waking  and  sleep.  Apparently  there  is  a  "  boom  " 
in  everything  but  that  one  dead  feature.  The  water  in  the 
gutters  used  to  be  stagnant  and  slimy,  and  a  potent  disease- 
breeder  ;  but  the  gutters  are  flushed  now,  two  or  three  times 
a  day,  by  powerful  machinery ;  in  many  of  the  gutters  the 
water  never  stands  still,  but  has  a  steady  current.  Other  san- 
itary improvements  have  been  made ;  and  with  such  effect 
that  New  Orleans  claims  to  be  (during  the  long  intervals 
between  the  occasional  yellow-fever  assaults)  one  of  the 
healthiest  cities  in  the  Union.  There 's  plenty  of  ice  now 
for  everybody,  manufactured  in  the  town.  It  is  a  driving 
place  commercially,  and  has  a  great  river,  ocean,  and  rail- 
way business.  At  the  date  of  our  visit,  it  was  the  best  lighted 
city  in  the  Union,  electrically  speaking.  The  New  Orleans 
electric  lights  were  more  numerous  than  those  of  New  York, 
and  very  much  better.  One  had  this  modified  noonday  not 
only  in  Canal  and  some  neighboring  chief  streets,  but  all 
along  a  stretch  of  five  miles  of  river  frontage.  There  are 
good  clubs  in  the  city  now  —  several  of  them  but  recently 
organized  —  and  inviting  modern-style  pleasure  resorts  at 
West  End  and  Spanish  Fort.  The  telephone  is  everywhere. 
One  of  the   most  notable   advances  is  in  journalism.     The 


428 


JOURNALISTIC  FEATS. 


newspapers,  as  I  remember  them,  were  not  a  striking  feature. 
Now  they  are.  Money  is  spent  upon  them  with  a  free  hand. 
They  get  the  news,  let  it  cost  what  it  may.     The  editorial 


work  is  not  hack- 
grinding,  but  lit- 
west  end.  erature.      As   an 

example  of  New 
Orleans  journalistic  achievement,  it  may  be  mentioned  that 
the  "Times-Democrat"  of  August  26,  1882,  contained  a. 
report  of  the  year's  business  of  the  towns  of  the  Mississippi 
Valley,  from  New  Orleans  all  the  way  to  St.  Paul  —  two 
thousand  miles.  That  issue  of  the  paper  consisted  of  forty 
pages ;  seven  columns  to  the  page  ;  two  hundred  and  eighty 
columns  in  all ;  fifteen  hundred  words  to  the  column ;  an 
aggregate  of  four  hundred  and  twenty  thousand  words.  That 
is  to  say,  not  much  short  of  three  times  as  many  words  as 
there  are  in  this  book.  One  may  with  sorrow  contrast  this 
with  the  architecture  of  New  Orleans. 

I  have  been  speaking  of  public  architecture  only.     The 


PRIVATE   MANSIONS.  429 

domestic  article  in  New  Orleans  is  reproachless,  notwith- 
standing it  remains  as  it  always  was.  All  the  dwellings  are 
of  wood  —  in  the  American  part  of  the  town,  I  mean  —  and 
all  have  a  comfortable  look.  Those  in  the  wealthy  quarter 
are  spacious ;  painted  snow-white  usually,  and  generally 
have  wide  verandas,  or  double-verandas,  supported  by  orna- 
mental columns.  These  mansions  stand  in  the  centre  of 
large  grounds,  and  rise,  garlanded  with  roses,  out  of  the 
midst  of  swelling  masses  of  shining  green  foliage  and  many- 
colored  blossoms.  No  houses  could  well  be  in  better  har- 
mony with  their  surroundings,  or  more  pleasing  to  the  eye, 
or  more  home-like  and  comfortable-looking. 

One  even  becomes  reconciled  to  the  cistern  presently  ;  this 
is  a  mighty  cask,  painted  green,  and  sometimes  a  couple  of 
stories  high,  which  is  propped  against  the  house-corner  on 
stilts.  There  is  a  mansion-and-brewery  suggestion  about  the 
combination  which  seems  very  incongruous  at  first.  But 
the  people  cannot  have  wells,  and  so  they  take  rain-water. 
Neither  can  they  conveniently  have  cellars,  or  graves;1  the 
town  being  built  upon  "  made  "  ground  ;  so  they  do  without 
both,  and  few  of  the  living  complain,  and  none  of  the  others. 

xThe  Israelites  are  buried  in  graves — by  permission,  I  take  it,  not  require- 
ment; but  none  else,  except  the  destitute,  who  are  buried  at  public  expense. 
The  graves  are  but  three  or  four  feet  deep. 


CHAPTER   XLIL 


HYGIENE   AND   SENTIMENT. 


THEY    bury  their   dead   in   vaults,   above   the   ground. 
These  vaults  have  a  resemblance  to  houses  —  some- 
times to  temples ;  are  built  of  marble,  generally ;  are  architec- 


THE    CEMETERY. 


turally  graceful  and  shapely ;  they  face  the  "walks  and  drive- 
ways of  the  cemetery  ;  and  when  one  moves  through  the  midst 
of  a  thousand  or  so  of  them  and  sees  their  white  roofs  and  scabies 


FLOWERS  AND   TOMBS. 


431 


IMMORTELLES. 


stretching  into  the  distance  on  every  hand,  the  phrase  "  city 
of  the  dead  "  has  all  at  once  a  meaning  to  him.  Many  of  the 
cemeteries  are  beautiful,  and  are  kept  in  perfect  order. 
When  one  goes  from  the  levee  or  the  business  streets  near 
it,  to  a  cemetery,  he  observes  to  himself  that  if  those  people 
down  there  would  live  as  neatly  while  they  are  alive  as  they 
do  after  they  are  dead,  they  would  find  many  advantages 
in  it ;  and  besides,  their  quarter  would  be  the  wonder  and 
admiration  of  the  business  world.  Fresh  flowers,  in  vases  of 
water,  are  to  be  seen  at  the  portals  of  many  of  the  vaults : 
placed  there  by  the  pious  hands  of  bereaved  parents  and 
children,  husbands  and  wives,  and  renewed  daily.  A  milder 
form  of  sorrow  finds  its  inexpensive  and  lasting  remembrancer 
in  the  coarse  and  ugly  but  indestructible  "immortelle"  — 
which  is  a  wreath  or  cross  or  some  such  emblem,  made  of 
rosettes  of  black  linen,  with  sometimes  a  yellow  rosette  at  the 
conjunction  of  the  cross's  bars,  —  kind  of  sorrowful  breast- 
pin, so  to  say.  The  immortelle  requires  no  attention  :  you 
just  hang  it  up,  and  there  you  are  ;  just  leave  it  alone,  it  will 


432 


CHAMELEONS   AND   SENTIMENT. 


take  care  of  your  grief  for  you,  and  keep  it  in  mind  better 
than  you  can ;  stands  weather  first-rate,  and  lasts  like 
boiler-iron. 

On  sunny  days,  pretty  little  chameleons  —  gracefullest  of 
legged  reptiles —  creep  along  the  marble  fronts  of  the  vaults, 
and  catch  flies.  Their  changes  of 
color  —  as  to  variety  —  are  not  up 
to  the  creature's  reputation.  They 
change  color  when  a  person  comes 
along  and  hangs  up  an  immor- 
telle ;  but  that  is  nothing :  any 
right-feeling  reptile  would  do  that. 

I  will  gradually  drop  this  subject 
of  graveyards.     I  have  been  trying 
all  I  could  to  get  down  to  the  senti- 
mental part  of  it,  but  I  cannot 
accomplish  it.       I  think 
there  is  no  genuinely 
sentimental  part 


CHAMELEONS. 


ghastly,  horrible. 
Graveyards  may 
have  been  justi- 
fiable in  the  by- 
gone ages,  when 
nobody  knew  that 
for  every  dead  body  put  into  the  ground,  to  glut  the  earth 
and  the  plant-roots  and  the  air  with  disease-germs,  five  or 
fifty,  or  maybe  a  hundred,  persons  must  die  before  their 
proper  time;  but  they  are  hardly  justifiable  now,  when 
even  the  children  know  that  a  dead  saint  enters  upon 
a   century-long  career   of    assassination    the    moment   the 


SLOW-PAY    SAINTS.  433 

earth  closes  over  his  corpse.  It  is  a  grim  sort  of  a  thought. 
The  relics  of  St.  Anne,  up  in  Canada,  have  now,  after 
nineteen  hundred  years,  gone  to  curing  the  sick  by  the 
dozen.  But  it  is  merest  matter-of-course  that  these  same 
relics,  within  a  generation  after  St.  Anne's  death  and  burial, 
made  several  thousand  people  sick.  Therefore  these  miracle- 
performances  are  simply  compensation,  nothing  more.  St. 
Anne  is  somewhat  slow  pay,  for  a  Saint,  it  is  true  ;  but  better 
a  debt  paid  after  nineteen  hundred  years,  and  outlawed  by 
the  statute  of  limitations,  than  not  paid  at  all ;  and  most  of 
the  knights  of  the  halo  do  not  pay  at  all.  Where  you 
find  one  that  pays  —  like  St.  Anne  — you  find  a  hundred  and 
fifty  that  take  the  benefit  of  the  statute.  And  none  of  them 
pay  any  more  than  the  principal  of  what  they  owe  —  they 
pay  none  of  the  interest  either  simple  or  compound.  A 
Saint  can  never  quite  return  the  principal,  however;  for  his 
dead  body  hills  people,  whereas  his  relics  heal  only — they 
never  restore  the  dead  to  life.  That  part  of  the  account  is 
always  left  unsettled. 

"  Dr.  F.  Julius  Le  Moyne,  after  fifty  years  of  medical  practice, 
wrote :  '  The  inhumation  of  human  bodies,  dead  from  infectious 
diseases,  results  in  constantly  loading  the  atmosphere,  and  polluting 
the  waters,  with  not  only  the  germs  that  rise  from  simply  putrefac- 
tion, but  also  with  the  specific  germs  of  the  diseases  from  which 
death  resulted.' 

"  The  gases  (from  buried  corpses)  will  rise  to  the  surface  through 
eight  or  ten  feet  of  gravel,  just  as  coal-gas  will  do,  and  there  is 
practically  no  limit  to  their  power  of  escape. 

"  During  the  epidemic  in  New  Orleans  in  1853,  Dr.  E.  H.  Barton 
reported  that  in  the  Fourth  District  the  mortality  was  four  hundred 
and  fifty-two  per  thousand  —  more  than  double  that  of  any  other. 
In  this  district  were  three  large  cemeteries,  in  which  during  the 
previous  year  more  than  three  thousand  bodies  had  been  buried. 
In  other  districts  the  proximity  of  cemeteries  seemed  to  aggravate 
the  disease. 

"In  1828  Professor  Bianchi  demonstrated  how  the  fearful  reap- 
pearance of  the  plague  at  Modena  was  caused  by  excavations  in 

28 


434 


BURIAL   STATISTICS. 


G  !l 


ground  where,  three  hundred  years  previously  the  victims  of  the  pes- 
tilence had  been  buried.     Mr.  Cooper,  in  explaining  the  causes  of 
some  epidemics,  remarks  that  the  opening  of 
the  plague  burial-grounds  at  Eyam  resulted 
in  an  immediate  outbreak  of  disease." — North 
American  Review,  No.  3,  Vol.  135. 


In  an  ad- 
dress be- 
fore    the 


Chicago 

Medical 

>,(-!  Society, 

in    advocacy 

of  cremation, 

Dr.   Charles    W. 

Purdy   made    some 

striking  comparisons 

what  a  burden  is  laid 

iety  by  the    burial   of 


relics.  "  One.  and  one-fourth  times  more  money  is 

expended  annually  in  funerals  in  the  United 
States  than  the  Government  expends  for  public-school  purposes. 
Funerals  cost  this  country  in  1880  enough  money  to  pay  the  liabil- 
ities of  all  the  commercial  failures  in  the  United  States  during  the 
same  year,  and  give  each  bankrupt  a  capital  of  $8,630  with  which 
to  resume  business.  Funerals  cost  annually  more  money  than  the 
value  of  the  combined  gold  and  silver  yield  of  the  United  States 
in  the  year  1880!  These  figures  do  not  include  the  sums  invested 
in  burial-grounds  and  expended  in  tombs  and  monuments,  nor  the 
loss  from  depreciation  of  property  in  the  vicinity  of  cemeteries." 


CREMATION. 


435 


For  the  rich,  cremation  would  answer  as  well  as  burial; 
for  the  ceremonies  connected  with  it  could  be  made  as  costly 
and  ostentatious  as  a  Hindoo  suttee;  while  for  the  poor, 
cremation  would  be  better  than  burial,  because  so  cheap 1  — 
so  cheap  until  the  poor  got  to  imitating  the  rich,  which 
they  Avould  do  by  and  by.  The  adoption  of  cremation  would 
relieve  us  of  a  muck  of  threadbare  burial-witticisms  ;  but,  on 
the  other  hand,  it  would  resurrect  a  lot  of  mildewed  old 
cremation-jokes  that  have  had  a  rest  for  two  thousand  years. 

I  have  a  colored  acquaintance  who  earns  his  living  by  odd 
jobs  and  heavy  manual  labor.  He  never  earns  above  four 
hundred  dollars  in  a  year,  and  as  he  has  a  wife  and  several 
young  children,  the  closest  scrimping  is  necessary  to  get 
him  through  to  the  end  of  the  twelve  months  debtless.  To 
such  a  man  a  funeral  is  a  colossal  financial  disaster.  While 
I  was  writing  one  of  the  preceding  chapters,  this  man  lost 
a  little  child.  He  walked  the  town  over  with  a  friend,  trying 
to  find  a  coffin  that  was  within  his  means.  He  bought  the 
very  cheapest  one  he  could  find,  plain  wood,  stained.  It  cost 
him  twenty-six  dollars.  It  would  have  cost  less  than  four, 
probably,  if  it  had  been  built  to  put  something  useful  into. 
He  and  his  family  will  feel  that  outlay  a  good  many 
months. 

1  Four  or  five  dollars  is  the  minimum  cost. 


CHAPTER   XLIIL 


THE   AKT  OF   INHUMATION. 


'"V^s 


ABOUT  the  same  time,  I  encountered  a  man  in  the  street, 
whom  I  had  not  seen  for  six  or  seven  years ;  and 
something  like  this  talk  followed.     I  said, — 

"  But  you  used  to  look  sad  and  oldish ;  you  don't  now. 
Where  did  you  get  all  this  youth  and  bubbling  cheerfulness  ? 

Give     me     the 
address." 

He  chuckled 
blithely,     took 
off  his   shining 
tile>  pointed  to 
a  notched  pink 
circlet  of  pa- 
per pasted  in- 
to its  crown, 
with  something- 
lettered    on   it, 
and     went     on 
chuckling  while 
I  read,  "  J.  B— , 

UNDERTAKER." 

Then  he  clapped 
his  hat  on,  gave 
it  an  irreverent  tilt  to  leeward,  and  cried  out, — 

"  That 's  what 's  the  matter !  It  used  to  be  rough  times 
with  me  when  you  knew  me  —  insurance-agency  business, 
you  know;   mighty  irregular.     Big  fire,   all   right  —  brisk 


HE   CHUCKLED. 


THE  UNDERTAKER  APPEARS. 


437 


trade  for  ten  days  while  people  scared ;  after  that,  dull 
policy-business  till  next  lire.  Town  like  this  don't  have 
fires  often  enough  —  a  fellow  strikes  so  many  dull  weeks  in 
a  row  that  he  gets  discouraged.  But  you  bet  you,  this  is  the 
business !  People  don't  wait  for  examples  to  die.  No,  sir, 
they  drop  off  right  along  —  there  ain't  any  dull  spots  in  the 
undertaker  line.  I  just  started  in  with  two  or  three  little 
old  coffins  and  a  hired  hearse,  and  now  look  at  the  thing ! 
I  've  worked  up  a  business  here  that  would  satisfy  any  man, 
don't  care  who  he  is.  Five  years  ago,  lodged  in  an  attic ; 
live  in  a  swell  house  now,  with  a  mansard  roof,  and  all  the 
modern  inconveniences." 

"  Does  a  coffin  pay  so  well  ?     Is  there  much  profit  on  a 
coffin?" 

"6ro-way!  How 
you  talk!"  Then, 
with  a  confiden- 
tial wink,  a  drop- 
ping of  the  voice, 
and  an  impressive 
laying  of  his  hand 
on  my  arm; 
"Look  here; 
there's  one  thing 
in  this  world 
which  isn't  ever 
cheap.  That 's  a 
coffin.  There 's 
one  thing  in  this 
world  which  a 
person  don't  ever 
try  to  jew  you 
down  on.     That's 

a  coffin.  There 's  one  thing  in  this  world  which  a  person 
don't  say,  —  <  I  '11  look  around  a  little,  and  if  I  find  I  can't 
do  better  I'll  come  back   and   take   it.'      That's   a  coffin. 


WHY,   JUST   LOOK  AT   IT." 


438  FOINE   BIG  PRICES. 

There  's  one  thing  in  this  world  which  a  person  won't  take 
in  pine  if  he  can  go  walnut ;  and  won't  take  in  walnut  if 
he  can  go  mahogany  ;  and  won't  take  in  mahogany  if  he  can 
go  an  iron  casket  with  silver  door-plate  and  bronze  handles. 
That 's  a  coffin.  And  there  's  one  thing  in  this  world  which 
you  don't  have  to  worry  around  after  a  person  to  get  him  to 
pay  for.  And  that's  a  coffin.  Undertaking?  —  why  it's  the 
dead-surest  business  in  Christendom,  and  the  nobbiest. 

"  Why,  just  look  at  it.  A  rich  man  won't  have  anything 
but  your  very  best ;  and  you  can  just  pile  it  on,  too  —  pile  it 
on  and  sock  it  to  him  —  he  won't  ever  holler.  And  you  take 
in  a  poor  man,  and  if  you  work  him  right  he  '11  bust  himself 
on  a  single  lay-out.  Or  especially  a  woman.  F'r  instance  : 
Mrs.  0' Flaherty  comes  in  —  widow  —  wiping  her  eyes  and 
kind  of  moaning.  Unhandkerchiefs  one  eye,  bats  it  around 
tearfully  over  the  stock ;  says,  — 

"  '  And  fhat  might  ye  ask  for  that  wan  ? ' 

"  '  Thirty-nine  dollars,  madam,'  says  I. 

"  '  It 's  a  foine  big  price,  sure,  but  Pat  shall  be  buried  like 
a  gintleman,  as  he  was,  if  I  have  to  work  me  fingers  off  for 
it.     I  '11  have  that  wan,  sor.' 

" '  Yes,  madam,'  says  I,  '  and  it  is  a  very  good  one,  too ; 
not  costly,  to  be  sure,  but  in  this  life  we  must  cut  our  gar- 
ment to  our  clothes,  as  the  saying  is.'  And  as  she  starts 
out,  I  heave  in,  kind  of  casually,  '  This  one  with  the  white 
satin  lining  is  a  beauty,  but  I  am  afraid  —  well,  sixty-five 
dollars  is  a  rather  —  rather  —  but  no  matter,  I  felt  obliged 
to  say  to  Mrs.  O'Shaughnessy,  — ' 

"  '  D'  ye  mane  to  soy  that  Bridget  O'Shaughnessy  bought 
the  mate  to  that  joo-ul  box  to  ship  that  dhrunken  divil  to 
Purgatory  in  ? ' 

" '  Yes,  madam.' 

"'Then  Pat  shall  go  to  heaven  in  the  twin  to  it,  if  it 
takes  the  last  rap  the  0'  Flaherties  can  raise ;  and  moind 
you,  stick  on  some  extras,  too,  and  I  '11  give  ye  another 
dollar.' 


MRS.   O'SHAUGHNESSY  BIDS. 


439 


"  And  as  I  lay-in  with  the  livery  stables,  of  course  I  don't 
forget  to  mention  that  Mrs.  O'Shaughnessy  hired  fifty-four 
dollars'  worth 
of  hacks  and 
flung  as  much 
style  into  Den- 
nis's funeral  as 
if  he  had  been 
a  duke  or  an 
assassin.  And 
of  course  she 
sails  in  and  goes 
the  O'Shaugh- 
nessy about 
four  hacks  and 
an  omnibus  bet- 
ter. That  used 
to  be,  but  that's 
all  played  now ; 
that  is,  in  this 
particular  town. 

The  Irish  got  to  piling  up  hacks  so,  on  their  funerals,  that  a 
funeral  left  them  ragged  and  hungry  for  two  years  after- 
ward ;  so  the  priest  pitched  in  and  broke  it  all  up.  He  don't 
allow  them  to  have  but  two  hacks  now,  and  sometimes  only 
one." 

"  Well,"  said  I,  "  if  you  are  so  light-hearted  and  jolly  in 
ordinary  times,  what  must  you  be  in  an  epidemic  ? " 

He  shook  his  head. 

"No,  you're  off,  there.  We  don't  like  to  see  an  epidemic. 
An  epidemic  don't  pay.  Well,  of  course  1  don't  mean  that, 
exactly  ;  but  it  don't  pay  in  proportion  to  the  regular  thing. 
Don't  it  occur  to  you,  why  ?  " 

"  No." 

"  Think." 

"  I  can't  imagine.     What  is  it  ?  " 


A.MBITION. 


440 


EMBAMMING  DISCOUNTED. 


"  It 's  just  two  things." 
"Well,  what  are  they?" 
"One's  Embamming." 
"  And  what 's  the  other  ?  " 
"Ice." 

"  How  is  that  ?  " 

"  Well,  in  ordinary  times,  a  person  dies,  and  we  lay  him 
up  in  ice  ;  one  day,  two  days,  maybe  three,  to  wait  for  friends 

to  come.  Takes  a  lot 
of  it — melts  fast.  We 
charge  jewelry  rates 
for  that  ice,  and  war- 
prices  for  attendance. 
Well,  don't  you  know, 
when  there 's  an  epi- 
demic, they  rush  'em 
to  the  cemetery  the 
minute  the  breath's 
out.  No  market  for 
ice  in  an  epidemic. 
Same  with  Embam- 
ming. You  take  a 
family  that 's  able  to 
embam,  and  you  've 
got  a  soft  thing.  You 
can  mention  sixteen 
different  ways  to  do 
it  —  though  there  ain't  only  one  or  two  ways,  when  you  come 
down  to  the  bottom  facts  of  it  —  and  they  '11  take  the  highest- 
priced  way,  every  time.  It 's  human  nature  —  human  nature 
in  grief.  It  don't  reason,  you  see.  'Time  being,  it  don't  care 
a  dam.  All  it  wants  is  physical  immortality  for  deceased, 
and  they  're  willing  to  pay  for  it.  All  you  've  got  to  do  is  to 
just  be  ca'm  and  stack  it  up  —  they'll  stand  the  racket. 
Why,  man,  you  can  take  a  defunct  that  you  could  n't  give 
away  ;  and  get  your  embamming  traps  around  you  and  go  to 


AN    EXPLANATION. 


CREMATION  TAKES  THE   POT.  441 

work ;  and  in  a  couple  of  hours  he  is  worth  a  cool  six  hun- 
dred—  that's  what  he's  worth.  There  ain't  anything  equal 
to  it  but  trading  rats  for  di'monds  in  time  of  famine.  Well, 
don't  you  see,  when  there 's  an  epidemic,  people  don't  wait 
to  embam.  No,  indeed  they  don't ;  and  it  hurts  the  business 
like  hellth,  as  we  say  —  hurts  it  like  hell-th,  health,  see?  — 
Our  little  joke  in  the  trade.  Well,  I  must  be  going.  Give 
me  a  call  whenever  you  need  any  —  I  mean,  when  you're 
going  by,  sometime." 

In  his  joyful  high  spirits,  he  did  the  exaggerating  himself, 
if  any  has  been  done.     1  have  not  enlarged  on  him. 

With  the  above  brief  references  to  inhumation,  let  us  leave 
the  subject.  As  for  me,  I  hope  to  be  cremated.  I  made 
that  remark  to  my  pastor  once,  who  said,  with  what  he 
seemed  to  think  was  an  impressive  manner, — 

"  I  would  n't  worry  about  that,  if  I  had  your  chances." 

Much  he  knew  about  it  —  the  family  all  so  opposed  to  it. 


CHAPTER   XLIV. 


CITY  SIGHTS. 


THE  old  French  part  of  New  Orleans  —  anciently  the 
Spanish  part  —  bears  no  resemblance  to  the  American 
end  of  the  city  :  the  American  end  which  lies  beyond  the 
intervening  brick  business-centre.  The  houses  are  massed 
in  blocks ;  are  austerely  plain  and  dignilied ;  uniform  of 
pattern,  with  here  and  there  a  departure  from  it  with  pleas- 
ant effect ;  all  are  plastered  on  the  outside,  and  nearly  all 
have  long,  iron-railed  verandas  running  along  the  several 
stories.  Their  chief  beauty  is  the  deep,  warm,  varicolored 
stain  with  which  time  and  the  weather  have  enriched  the 
plaster.  It  harmonizes  with  all  the  surroundings,  and  has 
as  natural  a  look  of  belonging  there  as  has  the  flush  upon 
sunset  clouds.  This  charming  decoration  cannot  be  suc- 
cessfully imitated;  neither  is  it  to  be  found  elsewhere  in 
America. 

The  iron  railings  are  a  specialty,  also.  The  pattern  is 
often  exceedingly  light  and  dainty,  and  airy  and  graceful 
— ■  with  a  large  cipher  or  monogram  in  the  centre,  a  delicate 
cobweb  of  baffling,  intricate  forms,  wrought  in  steel.  The 
ancient  railings  are  hand-made,  and  are  now  comparatively 
rare  and  proportionately  valuable.  They  are  become  bric- 
a-brac. 

The  party  had  the  privilege  of  idling  through  this  ancient 
quarter  of  New  Orleans  with  the  South's  finest  literary  genius, 
the  author  of  "  the  Grandissimes."  In  him  the  South  has 
found  a  masterly  delineator  of  its  interior  life  and  its  his- 
tory.    In  truth,  I  find  by  experience,  that  the  untrained  eye 


NEW   ORLEANS   STREETS. 


44a 


and  vacant  mind  can  inspect  it  and  learn  of  it  and  judge  of 
it  more  clearly  and  profitably  in  his  books  than  by  personal 
contact  with  it. 


THE    ST.    LOUTS    HOTEL. 


With  Mr.  Cable  along  to  see  for  you,  and  describe  and 
explain  and  illuminate,  a  jog  through  that  old  quarter  is  a 
vivid  pleasure.  And  you  have  a  vivid  sense  as  of  unseen  or 
dimly  seen  things  —  vivid,  and  yet  fitful  and  darkling :  you 
glimpse  salient  features,  but  lose  the  fine  shades  or  catch 
them  imperfectly  through  the  vision  of  the  imagination :  a 
case,  as  it  were,  of  ignorant  near-sighted  stranger  traversing 


444  CATHEDRALS  AND  CEMETERIES. 

the  rim  of  wide  vague  horizons  of  Alps  with  an  inspired  and 
enlightened  long-sighted  native. 

We  visited  the  old  St.  Louis  Hotel,  now  occupied  by  muni- 
cipal offices.  There  is  nothing  strikingly  remarkable  about 
it ;  but  one  can  say  of  it  as  of  the  Academy  of  Music  in  New 
York,  that  if  a  broom  or  a  shovel  has  ever  been  used  in  it 
there  is  no  circumstantial  evidence  to  back  up  the  fact.  It 
is  curious  that  cabbages  and  hay  and  things  do  not  grow  in 
the  Academy  of  Music ;  but  no  doubt  it  is  on  account  of  the 
interruption  of  the  light  by  the  benches,  and  the  impossi- 
bility of  hoeing  the  crop  except  in  the  aisles.  The  fact  that 
the  ushers  grow  their  buttonhole-bouquets  on  the  premises 
shows  what  might  be  done  if  they  had  the  right  kind  of  an 
agricultural  head  to  the  establishment. 

We  visited  also  the  venerable  Cathedral,  and  the  pretty 
square  in  front  of  it ;  the  one  dim  with  religious  light,  the 
other  brilliant  with  the  worldly  sort,  and  lovely  with  orange 
trees  and  blossomy  shrubs  ;  then  we  drove  in  the  hot  sun 
through  the  wilderness  of  houses  and  out  on  to  the  wide 
dead  level  beyond,  where  the  villas  are,  and  the  water  wheels 
to  drain  the  town,  and  the  commons  populous  with  cows  and 
children  ;  passing  by  an  old  cemetery  where  we  were  told  lie 
the  ashes  of  an  early  pirate ;  but  we  took  him  on  trust,  and 
did  not  visit  him.  He  was  a  pirate  with  a  tremendous  and 
sanguinary  history  ;  and  as  long  as  he  preserved  unspotted, 
in  retirement,  the  dignity  of  his  name  and  the  grandeur  of 
his  ancient  calling,  homage  and  reverence  were  his  from 
high  and  low ;  but  when  at  last  he  descended  into  politics 
and  became  a  paltry  alderman,  the  public  "  shook"  him,  and 
turned  aside  and  wept.  When  he  died,  they  set  up  a  monu- 
ment over  him ;  and  little  by  little  he  has  come  into  respect 
again  ;  but  it  is  respect  for  the  pirate,  not  the  alderman, 
To-day  the  loyal  and  generous  remember  only  what  he  was, 
and  charitably  forget  what  he  became. 

Thence,  we  drove  a  few  miles  across  a  swamp,  along  a 
raised  shell  road,  with  a  canal  on  one  hand  and  a  dense 


THE   SHELL  ROAD. 


445 


wood  on  the  other ;  and  here  and  there,  in  the  distance,  a 
ragged  and  angular-limbed  and  moss-bearded  cypress,  top 
standing  out,  clear  cut  against  the  sky,  and  as  quaint  of 
form  as  the  apple-trees  in  Japanese  pictures  —  such  was  our 
course  and  the  surroundings  of  it.  There  was  an  occasional 
alligator  swimming  comfortably  along  in  the  canal,  and  an 


THE   SHELL  KOAD. 


occasional  picturesque  colored  person  on  the  bank,  flinging' 
his  statue-rigid  reflection  upon  the  still  water  and  watching 
for  a  bite. 

And  by  and  by  we  reached  the  West  End,  a  collection  of 
hotels  of  the  usual  light  summer-resort  pattern,  with  broad 
verandas  all  around,  and  the  waves  of  the  wide  and  blue 
Lake  Pontchartrain  lapping  the  thresholds.  We  had  dinner 
on  a  ground-veranda  over  the  water  —  the  chief  dish  the 
renowned  fish  called  the  pompano,  delicious  as  the  less 
criminal  forms  of  sin. 

Thousands  of  people  come  by  rail  and  carriage  to  West 
End  and  to  Spanish  Fort  every  evening,  and  dine,  listen  to 


446 


SPANISH  FORT. 


the  bands,  take  strolls  in  the  open  air  under  the  electric 
lights,  go  sailing  on  the  lake,  and  entertain  themselves  in 
various  and  sundry  other  ways. 

We  had  opportunities  on  other  days  and  in  other  places 
to  test  the  pompano.  Notably,  at  an  editorial  dinner  at  one 
of  the  clubs  in  the  city.     He  was  in  his  last  possible  per- 


SPAN1SH   FOKT. 


fection  there,  and  justified  his  fame.  In  his  suite  was  a 
tall  pyramid  of  scarlet  cray-fish  —  large  ones  ;  as  large  as 
one's  thumb  ;  delicate,  palatable,  appetizing.  Also  devilled 
whitebait :  also  shrimps  of  choice  quality  ;  and  a  platter  of 
small  soft-shell  crabs  of  a  most  superior  breed.  The  other 
disbes  were  what  one  might  get  at  Delmonico's,  or  Bucking- 
ham Palace  ;  those  I  have  spoken  of  can  be  had  in  similar 
perfection  in  New  Orleans  only,  I  suppose. 

In  the  West  and  South  they  have  a  new  institution,  —  the 
Broom  Brigade.  It  is  composed  of  young  ladies  who  dress 
in  a  uniform  costume,  and  go  through  the  infantry  drill,  with 
broom  in  place  of  musket.     It  is  a  very  pretty  sight,  on  pri- 


THE  BROOM  DRILL. 


447 


vate  view.  When  they  perform  on  the  stage  of  a  theatre,  in 
the  blaze  of  colored  fires,  it  must  be  a  fine  and  fascinating 
spectacle.      I  saw  them  go  through  their  complex  manual 


THE   BROOM    BRIGADE. 


with  grace,  spirit,  and  admirable  precision.  I  saw  them  do 
everything  which  a  human  being  can  possibly  do  with  a 
broom,  except  sweep.  I  did  not  see  them  sweep.  But  I 
know  they  could  learn.  What  they  have  already  learned 
proves  that.  And  if  they  ever  should  learn,  and  should  go 
on  the  war-path  down  Tchoupitoulas  or  some  of  those  other 
streets  around  there,  those  thoroughfares  would  bear  a 
greatly  improved  aspect  in  a  very  few  minutes.      But  the 


448  HISTORICAL  PAINTING. 

girls  themselves  would  n't;  so  nothing  would  be  really 
gained,  after  all. 

The  drill  was  in  the  Washington  Artillery  building.  In 
this  building  we  saw  many  interesting  relics  of  the  war. 
Also  a  fine  oil-painting  representing  Stonewall  Jackson's 
last  interview  with  General  Lee.  Both  men  are  on  horse- 
back. Jackson  has  just  ridden  up,  and  is  accosting  Lee. 
The  picture  is  very  valuable,  on  account  of  the  portraits, 
which  are  authentic.  But,  like  many  another  historical 
picture,  it  means  nothing  without  its  label.  And  one  label 
will  fit  it  as  well  as  another  :  — 

First  Interview  between  Lee  and  Jackson. 

Last  Interview  between  Lee  and  Jackson. 

Jackson  Introducing  Himself  to  Lee. 

Jackson  Accepting  Lee's  Invitation  to  Dinner. 

Jackson  Declining  Lee's  Invitation  to  Dinner  —  with 
Thanks. 

Jackson  Apologizing  for  a  Heavy  Defeat. 

Jackson  Reporting  a  Great  Victory. 

Jackson  Asking  Lee  for  a  Match. 

It  tells  one  story,  and  a  sufficient  one ;  for  it  says  quite 
plainly  and  satisfactorily,  "  Here  are  Lee  and  Jackson  to- 
gether." The  artist  would  have  made  it  tell  that  this  is 
Lee  and  Jackson's  last  interview  if  he  could  have  done  it. 
But  he  could  n't,  for  there  was  n't  any  way  to  do  it.  A  good 
legible  label  is  usually  worth,  for  information,  a  ton  of  sig- 
nificant attitude  and  expression  in  a  historical  picture.  In 
Rome,  people  with  fine  sympathetic  natures  stand  up  and 
weep  in  front  of  the  celebrated  "  Beatrice  Cenci  the  Day 
before  her  Execution."  It  shows  what  a  label  can  do.  If 
they  did  not  know  the  picture,  they  would  inspect  it  un- 
moved, and  say,  "  Young  girl  with  hay  fever ;  young  girl 
with  her  head  in  a  bag." 

I  found  the  half-forgotten  Southern  intonations  and  elisions 
as  pleasing  to  my  ear  as  they  had  formerly  been.  A  South- 
erner talks  music.     At  least  it  is  music  to  me,  but  then  I 


SOUTHERN   SPEECH. 


449 


was  born  in  the  South.  The  educated  Southerner  has  no 
use  for  an  r,  except  at  the  beginning  of  a  word.  He  says 
"  honah,"  and  "  dinnah,"  and  "  Gove'nuh,"  and  "  befo'  the 
waw,"  and  so  on.  The  words  may  lack  charm  to  the  eye,  in 
print,  but  they  have  it  to  the  ear.  When  did  the  r  disappear 
from  Southern  speech,  and  how 
did  it  come  to  disappear  ?  The 
custom  of  dropping  it  was  not 
borrowed  from  the  North,  nor 
inherited  from  England.  Many 
Southerners  —  most  Southern- 
ers—  put  a  y  into  occasional 
words  that  begin  with  the  k 
sound.  For  instance,  they  say 
Mr.  K'yahtah  (Carter)  and 
speak  of  playing  k'yahds  or  of 
riding  in  the  k'yahs.  And  they 
have  the  pleasant  custom — long 
ago  fallen  into  decay  in  the 
North  —  of  frequently  employ- 
ing the  respectful  "  Sir."  In- 
stead of  the  curt  Yes,  and  the 
abrupt  No,  they  say  "  Yes, 
Suh  "  ;  "  No,  Suh." 

But  there  are  some  infelici- 
ties. .Such  as  "like"  for  "as," 
and  the  addition  of  an  "  at " 
where  it  is  n't  needed.     I  heard 

an  educated  gentleman  say,  "  Like  the  flag-officer  did." 
cook  or  his  butler  would  have  said,  "  Like  the  flag-officer 
done."  You  hear  gentlemen  say,  "  Where  have  you  been 
at  ?  "  And  here  is  the  aggravated  form  —  heard  a  ragged 
street  Arab  say  it  to  a  comrade  :  "  I  was  a-ask'n'  Tom  whah 
you  was  a-sett'n'  at."  The  very  elect  carelessly  say  "  will " 
when  they  mean  "  shall "  ;  and  many  of  them  say,  "  I  did  n't 
go  to  do  it,"  meaning  "  I  did  n't  mean  to  do  it."    The  North- 

29 


S& 


■is.^ 


WHAH   YOU    WAS?" 


His 


450  A   CURIOUS   PHRASE. 

ern  word  "guess"  —  imported  from  England,  where  it  used 
to  be  common,  and  now  regarded  by  satirical  Englishmen  as 
a  Yankee  original  —  is  but  little  used  among  Southerners. 
They  say  "  reckon."  They  have  n't  any  "  does  n't "  in  their 
language  ;  they  say  "  don't "  instead.  The  unpolished  often 
use  "  went "  for  "  gone."  It  is  nearly  as  bad  as  the  Northern 
"  had  n't  ought."  This  reminds  me  that  a  remark  of  a  very 
peculiar  nature  was  made  here  in  my  neighborhood  (in  the 
North)  a  few  days  ago :  "  He  had  n't  ought  to  have  went." 
How  is  that  ?  Is  n't  that  a  good  deal  of  a  triumph  ?  One 
knows  the  orders  combined  in  this  half-breed's  architecture 
without  inquiring  :  one  parent  Northern,  the  other  Southern. 
To-day  I  heard  a  school-mistress  ask,  "  Where  is  John  gone  ?" 
This  form  is  so  common  —  so  nearly  universal,  in  fact  —  that 
if  she  had  used  "  whither "  instead  of  "  where,"  I  think  it 
would  have  sounded  like  an  affectation. 

We  picked  up  one  excellent  word  —  a  word  worth  travel- 
ling to  New  Orleans  to  get ;  a  nice  limber,  expressive,  handy 
word  —  "  Lagniappe."  They  pronounce  it  laxmy-yap.  It  is 
Spanish  —  so  they  said.  We  discovered  it  at  the  head  of  a 
column  of  odds  and  ends  in  the  Picayune,  the  first  day  ; 
heard  twenty  people  use  it  the  second ;  inquired  what  it 
meant  the  third  ;  adopted  it  and  got  facility  in  swinging  it 
the  fourth.  It  has  a  restricted  meaning,  but  I  think  the 
people  spread  it  out  a  little  when  they  choose.  It  is  the 
equivalent  of  the  thirteenth  roll  in  a  "  baker's  dozen."  It 
is  something  thrown  in,  gratis,  for  good  measure.  The 
custom  originated  in  the  Spanish  quarter  of  the  city.  When 
a  child  or  a  servant  buys  something  in  a  shop  —  or  even  the 
mayor  or  the  governor,  for  aught  I  know  —  he  finishes  the 
operation  by  saying,  — 

"  Give  me  something  for  lagniappe." 

The  shopman  always  responds  ;  gives  the  child  a  bit  of 
liquorice-root,  gives  the  servant  a  cheap  cigar  or  a  spool  of 
thread,  gives  the  governor  —  I  don't  know  what  he  gives  the 
governor ;  support,  likely. 


"fob  lagniappe." 


FOR  LAGNIAPPE. 


453 


When  you  are  invited  to  drink,  —  and  this  does  occur  now 
and  then  in  New  Orleans, —  and  you  say,  "  What,  again  ?  — 
no,  I'ye  had  enough  ;  "  the  other  party  says,  "  But  just  this 
one  time  more,  —  this  is  for  lagniappe."  When  the  beau 
perceives  that  he  is  stacking  his  compliments  a  trifle  too 
high,  and  sees  by  the  young  lady's  countenance  that  the 
edifice  would  have  been  better  with  the  top  compliment  left 
off,  he  puts  his  "  I  beg  pardon,  —  no  harm  intended,"  into  the 
briefer  form  of  "  Oh,  that 's  for  lagniappe."  If  the  waiter  in 
the  restaurant  stumbles  and  spills  a  gill  of  coffee  down  the 
back  of  your  neck,  he  says,  "  For  lagniappe,  sah,"  and  gets 
you  another  cup  without  extra  charge. 


CHAPTER   XLV. 


SOUTHERN  SPORTS. 


IN  the  North  one  hears  the  war  mentioned,  in  social  conver- 
sation, once  a  month ;  sometimes  as  often  as  once  a  week ; 
but  as  a  distinct  subject  for  talk,  it  has  long  ago  been  relieved 
of  duty.  There  are  sufficient  reasons  for  this.  Given  a  dinner 
company  of  six  gentlemen  to-day,  it  can  easily  happen  that 
four  of  them  —  and  possibly  five  —  were  not  in  the  field  at 
all.  So  the  chances  are  four  to  two,  or  five  to  one,  that  the 
war  will  at  no  time  during  the  evening  become  the  topic  of 
conversation  ;  and  the  chances  are  still  greater  that  if  it  be- 
come the  topic  it  will  remain  so  but  a  little  while.  If  you 
add  six  ladies  to  the  company,  you  have  added  six  people 
who  saw  so  little  of  the  dread  realities  of  the  war  that  they 
ran  out  of  talk  concerning  them  years  ago,  and  now  would 
soon  weary  of  the  war  topic  if  you  brought  it  up. 

The  case  is  very  different  in  the  South.  There,  every  man 
you  meet  was  in  the  war  ;  and  every  lady  you  meet  saw  the 
war.  The  war  is  the  great  chief  topic  of  conversation.  The 
interest  in  it  is  vivid  and  constant ;  the  interest  in  other  topics 
is  fleeting.  Mention  of  the  war  will  wake  up  a  dull  com- 
pany and  set  their  tongues  going,  when  nearly  any  other 
topic  would  fail.  In  the  South,  the  war  is  what  A.D.  is  else- 
where :  they  date  from  it.  All  day  long  you  hear  things 
"  placed  "  as  having  happened  since  the  waw  ;  or  du'in'  the 
waw  ;  or  befo'  the  waw  ;  or  right  aftah  the  waw  ;  or  'bout 
two  yeahs  or  five  yeahs  or  ten  yeahs  befo'  the  waw  or  aftah 
the  waw.  It  shows  how  intimately  every  individual  was 
visited,  in  his  own  person,  by  that  tremendous  episode.     It 


WAR   TALK. 


455 


gives  the  inexperienced  stranger  a  better  idea  of  what  a  vast 
and  comprehensive  calamity  invasion  is  than  he  can  ever  get 
by  reading  books  at  the  fireside. 

At  a  club  one  evening,  a  gentleman  turned  to  me  and  said, 
in  an  aside  :  — 

"  You  notice,  of  course,  that  we  are  nearly  always  talking 
about  the  war.  It  is  n't  because  we  have  n't  anything  else  to 
talk  about,  but  because 
nothing  else  has  so  strong 
an  interest  for  us.  And 
there  is  another  reason : 
In  the  war,  each  of  us,  in 
his  own  person,  seems  to 
have  sampled  all  the  dif- 
ferent varieties  of  human 
experience ;  as  a  conse- 
quence, you  can't  mention 
an  outside  matter  of  any 
sort  but  it  will  certainly 
remind  some  listener  of 
something  that  happened 
during  the  war, —  and  out 
he  comes  with  it.  Of 
course  that  brings  the  talk 
back  to  the  war.  You 
may  try  all  you  want  to,  to 
keep  other  subjects  before 
the  house,  and  we  may  all 
join  in  and  help,  but  there 
*can  be  but  one  result:  the 
most  random  topic  would 
load  every  man  up  with  war 

reminiscences,  and  shut  him  up,  too  ;  and  talk  would  be  likely 
to  stop  presently,  because  you  can't  talk  pale  inconseqnentiali- 
ties  when  you  've  got  a  crimson  fact  or  fancy  in  your  head 
that  vou  are  burnins;  to  fetch  out." 


"WAW   TALK." 


456  WARS   AND   MOONS. 

The  poet  was  sitting  some  little  distance  away  ;  and  pres- 
ently he  began  to  speak  —  about  the  moon. 

The  gentleman  who  had  been  talking  to  me  remarked  in 
an  "  aside  :  "  "  There,  the  moon  is  far  enough  from  the  seat 
of  war,  but  you  will  see  that  it  will  suggest  something  to 
somebody  about  the  war  ;  in  ten  minutes  from  now  the 
moon,  as  a  topic,  will  be  shelved." 

The  poet  was  saying  he  had  noticed  something  which  was 
a  surprise  to  him;  had  had  the  impression  that  down  here, 
toward  the  equator,  the  moonlight  was  much  stronger  and 
brighter  than  up  North  ;  had  had  the  impression  that  when 
he  visited  New  Orleans,  many  years  ago,  the  moon  — 

Interruption  from  the  other  end  of  the  room  :  — 

"Let  me^explain  that.  Reminds  me  of  an  anecdote.  Every- 
thing is  changed  since  the  war,  for  better  or  for  worse  ;  but 
you  '11  find  people  down  here  born  grumblers,  who  see  no 
change  except  the  change  for  the  worse.  There  was  an  old 
negro  woman  of  this  sort.  A  young  New-Yorker  said  in  her 
presence,  '  What  a  wonderful  moon  you  have  down  here ! ' 
She  sighed  and  said,  '  All,  bless  yo'  heart,  honey,  you  ought 
to  seen  dat  moon  befo'  de  waw  ! '  " 

The  new  topic  was  dead  already.  But  the  poet  resurrected 
it,  and  gave  it  a  new  start. 

A  brief  dispute  followed,  as  to  whether  the  difference  be- 
tween Northern  and  Southern  moonlight  really  existed  or  was 
only  imagined.  Moonlight  talk  drifted  easily  into  talk  about 
artificial  methods  of  dispelling  darkness.  Then  somebody 
remembered  that  when  Farragut  advanced  upon  Port  Hud- 
son on  a  dark  night — and  did  not  wish  to  assist  the  aim  of 
the  Confederate  gunners  —  he  carried  no  battle-lanterns,  bub 
painted  the  decks  of  his  ships  white,  and  thus  created  a 
dim  but  valuable  light,  which  enabled  his  own  men  to 
grope  their  way  around  with  considerable  facility.  At  this 
point  the  war  got  the  floor  again — the  ten  minutes  not  quite 
up  yet. 

I  was  not  sorry,  for  war  talk  by  men  who  have  been  in  a 


COCK-FIGHTING. 


457 


war  is  always  interesting  ;  where- 
moon  talk  by  a  poet  who  has 
not  been  in  the  moon  is  likely  to 
dull. 

We  went  to  a  cockpit  in  New 
Orleans  on  a  Saturday  afternoon. 
I  had  never  seen  a  cock-fight  be- 
fore. There  were  men  and  boys 
there  of  all  ages  and  all  colors,  and  of  many  languages  and 
nationalities.  But  I  noticed  one  quite  conspicuous  and  sur- 
prising absence  :  the  traditional  brutal  faces.  There  were  no 
brutal  faces.  With  no  cock-fighting  going  on,  you  could  have 
played  the  gathering  on  a  stranger  for  a  prayer-meeting  ;  and 
after  it  began,  for  a  revival,  —  provided  you  blindfolded  your 
stranger,  —  for  the  shouting  was  something  prodigious. 


458  A  CRUEL  FASCINATION. 

A  negro  and  a  white  man  were  in  the  ring ;  everybody 
else  outside.  The  cocks  were  brought  in  in  sacks;  and  when 
time  was  called,  they  were  taken  out  by  the  two  bottle-holders, 
stroked,  caressed,  poked  toward  each  other,  and  finally  lib- 
erated. The  big  black  cock  plunged  instantly  at  the  little 
gray  one  and  struck  him  on  the  head  with  his  spur.  The 
gray  responded  with  spirit.  Then  the  Babel  of  many-tongucd 
shoutings  broke  out,  and  ceased  not  thenceforth.  When 
the  cocks  had  been  fighting  some  little  time,  I  was  expecting 
them  momently  to  drop  dead,  for  both  were  blind,  red  with 
blood,  and  so  exhausted  that  they  frequently  fell  down.  Yet 
they  would  not  give  up,  neither  would  they  die.  The  negro 
and  the  white  man  would  pick  them  up  every  few  seconds, 
wipe  them  off,  blow  cold  water  on  them  in  a  fine  spray,  and 
take  their  heads  in  their  mouths  and  hold  them  there  a  mo- 
ment —  to  warm  back  the  perishing  life  perhaps ;  I  do  not 
know.  Then,  being  set  down  again,  the  dying  creatures  would 
totter  gropingly  about,  with  dragging  wings,  find  each  other, 
strike  a  guess-work  blow  or  two,  and  fall  exhausted  once 
more. 

I  did  not  see  the  end  of  the  battle.  I  forced  myself  to  en- 
dure it  as  long  as  T  could,  but  it  was  too  pitiful  a  sight ;  so 
I  made  frank  confession  to  that  effect,  and  we  retired.  We 
heard  afterward  that  the  black  cock  died  in  the  ring,  and 
fighting  to  the  last. 

Evidently  there  is  abundant  fascination  about  this  "  sport " 
for  such  as  have  had  a  degree  of  familiarity  with  it.  I  never 
saw  people  enjoy  anything  more  than  this  gathering  enjoyed 
this  fight.  The  case  was  the  same  with  old  gray-heads  and 
with  boys  of  ten.  They  lost  themselves  in  frenzies  of 
delight.  The  "  cocking-main  "  is  an  inhuman  sort  of  enter- 
tainment, there  is  no  question  about  that ;  still,  it  seems  a 
much  more  respectable  and  far  less  cruel  sport  than  fox- 
hunting— for  the  cocks  like  it;  they  experience,  as  well  as 
confer  enjoyment ;  which  is  not  the  fox's  case. 

We  assisted  —  in  the  French  sense  — at  a  mule  race,  one 


BEAUTY   AND   CHIVALRY.  459 

day.  I  believe  I  enjoyed  this  contest  more  than  any  other 
mule  there.  I  enjoyed  it  more  than  I  remember  having 
enjoyed  any  other  animal  race  I  ever  saw.  The  grand 
stand  was  well  filled  with  the  beauty  and  the  chivalry  of 
New  Orleans.  That  phrase  is  not  original  with  me.  It  is 
the  Southern  reporter's.  He  has  used  it  for  two  generations. 
He  uses  it  twenty  times  a  day,  or  twenty  thousand  times  a 
day ;  or  a  million  times  a  day  —  according  to  the  exigencies. 
He  is  obliged  to  use  it  a  million  times  a  day,  if  he  have 
occasion  to  speak  of  respectable  men  and  women  that  often ; 
for  he  has  no  other  phrase  for  such  service  except  that  sin- 
gle one.  He  never  tires  of  it ;  it  always  has  a  fine  sound 
to  him.  There  is  a  kind  of  swell  mediaeval  bulliness  and 
tinsel  about  it  that  pleases  his  gaudy  barbaric  soul.  If  he 
had  been  in  Palestine  in  the  early  times,  we  should  have 
had  no  references  to  "  much  people  "  out  of  him.  No,  he 
would  have  said  "  the  beauty  and  the  chivalry  of  Galilee  " 
assembled  to  hear  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount.  It  is  likely 
that  the  men  and  women  of  the  South  are  sick  enough  of 
that  phrase  by  this  time,  and  would  like  a  change,  but  there 
is  no  immediate  prospect  of  their  getting  it. 

The  New  Orleans  editor  has  a  strong,  compact,  direct, 
unflowery  style  :  wastes  no  words,  and  does  not  gush.  Not 
so  with  his  average  correspondent.  In  the  Appendix  I 
have  quoted  a  good  letter,  penned  by  a  trained  hand ;  but 
the  average  correspondent  hurls  a  style  which  differs  from 
that.     For  instance  :  — 

The  "  Times-Democrat "  sent  a  relief-steamer  up  one  of 
the  bayous,  last  April.  This:  steamer  landed  at  a  village, 
up  there  somewhere,  and  the  Captain  invited  some  of  the 
ladies  of  the  village  to  make  a  short  trip  with  him.  They 
accepted  and  came  aboard,  and  the  steamboat  shoved  out 
up  the  creek.  That  was  all  there  was  "  to  it."  And  that 
is  all  that  the  editor  of  the  "  Times-Democrat "  would  have 
got  out  of  it.  There  was  nothing  in  the  thing  but  statistics, 
and  he  would  have  g;ot  nothing;  else  out  of  it.     He  would 


460 


UNSETTLED   BY   WOMAN. 


probably  have  even  tabulated  them,  partly  to  secure  perfect 
clearness  of  statement,  and  partly  to  save  space.     But  his 

special  correspond- 
ent knows  other 
methods  of  hand- 
ling statistics.  He 
just  throws  off  all 
restraint  and  wal- 
lows in  them :  — 


"  On  Saturday,  ear- 
ly in  the  morning, 
the  beauty  of  the 
place  graced  our  cab- 
in, and  proud  of  her 
fair  freight  the  gal- 
lant little  boat  glided 
up  the  bayou." 

Twenty -two 
words  to  say  the 
ladies  came  aboard 
and  the  boat  shoved 
out  up  the  creek, 
is  a  clean  waste  of 
ten  good  words,  and 
is  also  destructive 
of  compactness  of 
statement. 

The  trouble  with 
guests.  the     Southern    re- 

porter is — Women. 
They  unsettle  him  ;  they  throw  him  off  his  balance.  He  is 
plain,  and  sensible,  and  satisfactory,  until  a  woman  heaves  in 
sight.  Then  he  goes  all  to  pieces ;  his  mind  totters,  he 
becomes  flowery  and  idiotic.  From  reading  the  above 
extract,  you  would  imagine  that  this  student  of  Sir  Walter 


LURID    WRITING.  461 

Scott  is  an  apprentice,  and  knows  next  to  nothing  about 
handling  a  pen.  On  the  contrary,  he  furnishes  plenty  of 
proofs,  in  his  long  letter,  that  he  knows  well  enough  how 
to  handle  it  when  the  women  are  not  around  to  give  him 
the  artificial-flower  complaint.     For  instance  :  — 

"  At  4  o'clock  ominous  clouds  began  to  gather  in  the  southeast, 
and  presently  from  the  Gulf  there  came  a  blow  which  increased  in 
severity  every  moment.  It  was  not  safe  to  leave  the  landing  then, 
and  there  was  a  delay.  The  oaks  shook  off  long  tresses  of  their 
mossy  beards  to  the  tugging  of  the  wind,  and  the  bayou  in  its  ambi- 
tion put  on  miniature  waves  in  mocking  of  much  larger  bodies  of 
water.  A  lull  permitted  a  start,  and  homewards  we  steamed,  an  inky 
sky  overhead  and  a  heavy  wind  blowing.  As  darkness  crept  on,  there 
were  few  on  board  who  did  not  wish  themselves  nearer  home." 

There  is  nothing  the  matter  with  that.  It  is  good  descrip- 
tion, compactly  put.  Yet  there  was  great  temptation,  there, 
to  drop  into  lurid  writing. 

But  let  us  return  to  the  mule.  Since  I  left  him,  I  have 
rummaged  around  and  found  a  full  report  of  the  race.  In 
it  I  find  confirmation  of  the  theory  which  I  broached  just 
now — -namely,  that  the  trouble  with  the  Southern  reporter 
is  Women :  "Women,  supplemented  by  Walter  Scott  and  his 
knights  and  beauty  and  chivalry,  and  so  on.  This  is  an 
excellent  report,  as  long  as  the  women  stay  out  of  it.  But 
when  they  intrude,  we  have  this  frantic  result :  — 

"  It  will  be  probably  a  long  time  before  the  ladies'  stand  presents 
such  a  sea  of  foam-like  loveliness  as  it  did  yesterday.  The  New 
Orleans  women  are  always  charming,  but  never  so  much  so  as  at  this 
time  of  the  year,  when  in  their  dainty  spring  costumes  they  bring 
with  them  a  breath  of  balmy  freshness  and  an  odor  of  sanctity 
unspeakable.  The  stand  was  so  crowded  with  them  that,  walking 
at  their  feet  and  seeing  no  possibility  of  approach,  many  a  man 
appreciated  as  he  never  did  before  the  Peri's  feeling  at  the  Gates  of 
Paradise,  and  wondered  what  was  the  priceless  boon  that  would 
admit  him  to  their  sacred  presence.  Sparkling  on  their  white-robed 
breasts  or  shoulders  were  the  colors  of  their  favorite  knights,  and 


462 


FREAKS   OF   FASHION. 


were  it  not  for  the  fact  that  the  doughty  heroes  appeared  on  unro- 
mantic  mules,  it  would  have  heen  easy  to  imagine  one  of  King 
Arthur's  gala-days." 

There  were  thirteen  mules  in  the  first  heat ;  all  sorts  of 
mules,  they  were  ;  all  sorts  of  complexions,  gaits,  dispositions, 
aspects.  Some  were  handsome  creatures,  some  were  not ; 
some  were  sleek,  some  had  n't  had  their  fur  brushed  lately  ; 
some  were  innocently  gay  and  frisky  ;  some  were  full  of  mal- 


ABSENCE    OF   HARMONY. 


ice  and  all  unrighteousness ;  guessing  from  looks,  some  of 
them  thought  the  matter  on  hand  was  war,  some  thought 
it  was  a  lark,  the  rest  took  it  for  a  religious  occasion.  And 
each  mule  acted  according  to  his  convictions.  The  result 
was  an  absence  of  harmony  well  compensated  by  a  conspic- 
uous presence  of  variety  —  variety  of  a  picturesque  and 
entertaining  sort. 

All  the  riders  were  young  gentlemen  in  fashionable  soci- 
ety. If  the  reader  has  been  wondering  why  it  is  that  the 
ladies  of  New  Orleans  attend  so  humble  an  orgy  as  a  mule- 


MULE   RACING. 


463 


race,  the  thing  is  explained  now. 
It  is  a  fashion-freak ;  all  con- 
nected with  it  are  people  of 
fashion. 

It  is  great  fun,  and  cordially 
liked.  The  mule-race  is  one  of 
the  marked  occasions  of  the  year.  It  has  brought  some 
pretty  fast  mules  to  the  front.  One  of  these  had  to  be  ruled 
out,  because  he  was  so  fast  that  he  turned  the  thing  into  a 
one-mule  contest,  and  robbed  it  of  one  of  its  best  features  — 
variety.  But  every  now  and  then  somebody  disguises  him  with 
a  new  name  and  a  new*  complexion,  and  rings  him  in  again 

The  riders  dress  in  full  jockey  costumes  of  bright-colored 
silks,  satins,  and  velvets. 


464  CONFLICTING  OPINIONS. 

The  thirteen  mules  got  away  in  a  body,  after  a  couple  of 
false  starts,  and  scampered  off  with  prodigious  spirit.  As 
each  mule  and  each  rider  had  a  distinct  opinion  of  his  own 
as  to  how  the  race  ought  to  be  run,  and  which  side  of  the 
track  was  best  in  certain  circumstances,  and  how  often  the 
track  ought  to  be  crossed,  and  when  a  collision  ought  to  be 
accomplished,  and  when  it  ought  to  be  avoided,  these  twenty- 
six  conflicting  opinions  created  a  most  fantastic  and  pic- 
turesque confusion,  and  the  resulting  spectacle  was  killingly 
comical. 

Mile  heat ;  time,  2:22.  Eight  of  the  thirteen  mules  dis- 
tanced. I  had  a  bet  on  a  mule  which  would  have  won  if  the 
procession  had  been  reversed.  The  second  heat  was  good 
fun ;  and  so  was  the  "  consolation  race  for  beaten  mules," 
which  followed  later ;  but  the  first  heat  was  the  best  in  that 
respect. 

I  think  that  much  the  most  enjoyable  of  all  races  is  a 
steamboat  race ;  but,  next  to  that,  1  prefer  the  gay  and  joy- 
ous mule-rush.  Two  red-hot  steamboats  raging  along,  neck- 
and-neck,  straining  every  nerve  —  that  is  to  say,  every  rivet 
in  the  boilers  —  quaking  and  shaking  and  groaning  from 
stem  to  stern,  spouting  white  steam  from  the  pipes,  pouring 
black  smoke  from  the  chimneys,  raining  down  sparks,  part- 
ing the  river  into  long  breaks  of  hissing  foam  —  this  is 
sport  that  makes  a  body's  very  liver  curl  with  enjoyment. 
A  horse-race  is  pretty  tame  and  colorless  in  comparison. 
Still,  a  horse-race  might  be  well  enough,  in  its  way,  perhaps, 
if  it  were  not  for  the  tiresome  false  starts.  But  then, 
nobody  is  ever  killed.  At  least,  nobody  was  ever  killed 
when  I  was  at  a  horse-race.  They  have  been  crippled,  it  is 
true ;  but  this  is  little  to  the  purpose. 


CHAPTER  XL VI. 

ENCHANTMENTS   AND   ENCHANTERS. 

THE  largest  annual  event  in  New  Orleans  is  a  something 
which  we  arrived  too  late  to  sample  —  the  Mardi-Gras 
festivities.  I  saw  the  procession  of  the  Mystic  Crew  of  Comus 
there,  twenty-four  years  ago  —  with  knights  and  nobles  and 
so  on,  clothed  in  silken  and  golden  Paris-made  gorgeous- 
nesses,  planned  and  bought  for  that  single  night's  use ;  and 
in  their  train  all  manner  of  giants,  dwarfs,  monstrosities, 
and  other  diverting  grotesquerie  —  a  startling  and  wonderful 
sort  of  show,  as  it  filed  solemnly  and  silently  down  the 
street  in  the  light  of  its  smoking  and  flickering  torches ;  but 
it  is  said  that  in  these  latter  days  the  spectacle  is  mightily 
augmented,  as  to  cost,  splendor,  and  variety.  There  is  a 
chief  personage — "  Rex;"  and  if  I  remember  rightly,  neither 
this  king  nor  any  of  his  great  following  of  subordinates  is 
known  to  any  outsider.  All  these  people  are  gentlemen  of 
position  and  consequence  ;  and  it  is  a  proud  thing  to  belong 
to  the  organization ;  so  the  mystery  in  which  they  hide  their 
personality  is  merely  for  romance's  sake,  and  not  on  account 
of  the  police. 

Mardi-Gras  is  of  course  a  relic  of  the  French  and  Spanish 
occupation  ;  but  I  judge  that  the  religious  feature  has  been 
pretty  well  knocked  out  of  it  now.  Sir  Walter  has  got  the 
advantage  of  the  gentlemen  of  the  cowl  and  rosary,  and 
he  will  stay.  His  mediaeval  business,  supplemented  by  the 
monsters  and  the  oddities,  and  the  pleasant  creatures  from 
fairy-land,  is  finer  to  look  at  than  the  poor  fantastic  inven- 
tions and  performances  of  the  revelling  rabble  of  the  priest's 

30 


466 


MARDI-GRAS. 


day,  and  serves  quite  as  well,  perhaps,  to  emphasize  the  day 
and  admonish  men  that  the  grace-line  between  the  worldly 
season  and  the  holy  one  is  reached. 


MARDI-GKAS. 


This  Mardi-Gras  pageant  was  the  exclusive  possession  of 
New  Orleans  until  recently.  But  now  it  has  spread  to  Mem- 
phis and  St.  Louis  and  Baltimore.  It  has  probably  reached 
its  limit.     It  is  a  thing  which  could  hardly  exist  in  the 


MEDIAEVAL  ENCHANTERS.  467 

practical  North  ;  would  certainly  last  but  a  very  brief  time  ; 
as  brief  a  time  as  it  would  last  in  London.  For  the  soul  of 
it  is  the  romantic,  not  the  funny  and  the  grotesque.  Take 
away  the  romantic  mysteries,  the  kings  and  knights  and  big- 
sounding  titles,  and  Mardi-Gras  would  die,  down  there  in 
the  South.  The  very  feature  that  keeps  it  alive  in  the  South 
—  girly-girly  romance  —  would  kill  it  in  the  North  or  in 
London.  Puck  and  Punch,  and  the  press  universal,  would 
fall  upon  it  and  make  merciless  fun  of  it,  and  its  first  exhi- 
bition would  be  also  its  last. 

Against  the  crimes  of  the  French  Revolution  and  of  Bona- 
parte may  be  set  two  compensating  benefactions  :  the  Revo- 
lution broke  the  chains  of  the  ancien  regime  and  of  the 
Church,  and  made  of  a  nation  of  abject  slaves  a  nation  of 
freemen ;  and  Bonaparte  instituted  the  setting  of  merit 
above  birth,  and  also  so  completely  stripped  the  divinity 
from  royalty,  that  whereas  crowned  heads  in  Europe  were 
gods  before,  they  are  only  men,  since,  and  can  never  be  gods 
again,  but  only  figure-heads,  and  answerable  for  their  acts 
like  common  clay.  Such  benefactions  as  these  compensate 
the  temporary  harm  which  Bonaparte  and  the  Revolution 
did,  and  leave  the  world  in  debt  to  them  for  these  great  and 
permanent  services  to  liberty,  humanity,  and  progress. 

Then  comes  Sir  Walter  Scott  with  his  enchantments,  and 
by  his  single  might  checks  this  wave  of  progress,  and  even 
turns  it  back ;  sets  the  world  in  love  with  dreams  and  phan- 
toms ;  with  decayed  and  swinish  forms  of  religion ;  with 
decayed  and  degraded  systems  of  government ;  with  the 
sillinesses  and  emptinesses,  sham  grandeurs,  sham  gauds, 
and  sham  chivalries  of  a  brainless  and  worthless  long-van- 
ished society.  He  did  measureless  harm  ;  more  real  and 
lasting  harm,  perhaps,  than  any  other  individual  that  ever 
wrote.  Most  of  the  world  has  now  outlived  good  part  of 
these  harms,  though  by  no  means  all  of  them  ;  but  in  our 
South  they  flourish  pretty  forcefully  still.  Not  so  forcefully 
as  half  a  generation  ago,  perhaps,  but  still  forcefully.    There, 


468 


THE   WALTER  DISEASE. 


the  genuine  and  whole- 
some civilization  of  the 
nineteenth  century  is 
curiously  confused  and 
commingled  with  the 
Walter  Scott  Middle-Age 
sham  civilization  and  so 
you  have  practical,  com- 
mon-sense, progressive  ideas,  and  progressive  works,  mixed 
up  with  the  duel,  the  inflated  speech,  and  the  jejune  ro- 
manticism of  an  absurd  past  that  is  dead,  and  out  of  char- 
ity ought  to  be  buried.  But  for  the  Sir  Walter  disease, 
the  character  of  the  Southerner  —  or  Southron,  accord- 
ing to  Sir  Walter's  starchier  way  of  phrasing  it  —  would  be 
wholly  modern,  in  place  of  modern  and  mediaeval  mixed, 


MODERN  ROMANTICISxM.  469 

and  the  South  would  be  fully  a  generation  further  advanced 
than  it  is.  It  was  Sir  Walter  that  made  every  gentleman  in 
the  South  a  Major  or  a  Colonel,  or  a  General  or  a  Judge, 
before  the  war ;  and  it  was  he,  also,  that  made  these  gentle- 
men value  these  bogus  decorations.  For  it  was  he  that 
created  rank  and  caste  down  there,  and  also  reverence  for 
rank  and  caste,  and  pride  and  pleasure  in  them.  Enough  is 
laid  on  slavery,  without  fathering  upon  it  these  creations 
and  contributions  of  Sir  Walter. 

Sir  Walter  had  so  large  a  hand  in  making  Southern  char- 
acter, as  it  existed  before  the  war,  that  he  is  in  great  measure 
responsible  for  the  war.  It  seems  a  little  harsh  toward  a 
dead  man  to  say  that  we  never  should  have  had  any  war  but 
for  Sir  Walter  ;  and  yet  something  of  a  plausible  argument 
might,  perhaps,  be  made  in  support  of  that  wild  proposition. 
The  Southerner  of  the  American  revolution  owned  slaves  ;  so 
did  the  Southerner  of  the  Civil  War  :  but  the  former  resem- 
bles the  latter  as  an  Englishman  resembles  a  Frenchman. 
The  change  of  character  can  be  traced  rather  more  easily  to 
Sir  Walter's  influence  than  to  that  of  any  other  thing  or 
person. 

One  may  observe,  by  one  or  two  signs,  how  deeply  that 
influence  penetrated,  and  how  strongly  it  holds.  If  one  take 
up  a  Northern  or  Southern  literary  periodical  of  forty  or 
fifty  years  ago,  he  will  find  it  filled  with  wordy,  windy,  flow- 
ery "  eloquence,"  romanticism,  sentimentality  —  all  imitated 
from  Sir  Walter,  and  sufficiently  badly  done,  too  —  innocent 
travesties  of  his  style  and  methods,  in  fact.  This  sort  of  lit- 
erature being  the  fashion  in  bcth  sections  of  the  country, 
there  was  opportunity  for  the  fairest  competition  ;  and  as  a 
consequence,  the  South  was  able  to  show  as  many  well-known 
literary  names,  proportioned  to  population,  as  the  North 
could. 

But  a  change  has  come,  and  there  is  no  opportunity  now 
for  a  fair  competition  between  North  and  South.  For  the 
North  has  thrown  out  that  old  inflated  style,  whereas  the 


470  A  GOOD   WORK   UNDERMINED. 

Southern  writer  still  clings  to  it  —  clings  to  it  and  has  a 
restricted  market  for  his  wares,  as  a  consequence.  There  is 
as  much  literary  talent  in  the  South,  now,  as  ever  there  was, 
of  course  ;  but  its  work  can  gain  but  slight  currency  under 
present  conditions  ;  the  authors  write  for  the  past,  not  the 
present ;  they  use  obsolete  forms,  and  a  dead  language.  But 
when  a  Southerner  of  genius  writes  modern  English,  his 
book  goes  upon  crutches  no  longer,  but  upon  wings ;  and 
they  carry  it  swiftly  all  about  America  and  England,  and 
through  the  great  English  reprint  publishing  houses  of  Ger- 
many —  as  witness  the  experience  of  Mr.  Cable  and  Uncle 
Remus,  two  of  the  very  few  Southern  authors  who  do  not 
write  in  the  southern  style.  Instead  of  three  or  four  widely- 
known  literary  names,  the  South  ought  to  have  a  dozen  or 
two — and  will  have  them  when  Sir  Walter's  time  is  out. 

A  curious  exemplification  of  the  power  of  a  single  book 
for  good  or  harm  is  shown  in  the  effects  wrought  by  Don 
Quixote  and  those  wrought  by  Ivanhoe.  The  first  swept  the 
world's  admiration  for  the  media? val  chivalry-silliness  out  of 
existence ;  and  the  other  restored  it.  As  far  as  our  South  is 
concerned,  the  good  work  done  by  Cervantes  is  pretty  nearly 
a  dead  letter,  so  effectually  has  Scott's  pernicious  work 
undermined  it. 


CHAPTER   XLVIL 

UNCLE   REMUS   AND   MR.   CARLE. 

MR.  JOEL  CHANDLER  HARRIS  ("Uncle  Remus") 
was  to  arrive  from  Atlanta  at  seven  o'clock  Sunday 
morning ;  so  we  got  up  and  received  him.  We  were  able  to 
detect  him  among  the  crowd  of  arrivals  at  the  hotel-counter 
by  his  correspondence  with  a  description  of  him  which  had 
been  furnished  us  from  a  trustworthy  source.  He  was  said 
to  be  undersized,  red-haired,  and  somewhat  freckled.  He 
was  the  only  man  in  the  party  whose  outside  tallied  with  this 
bill  of  particulars.  He  was  said  to  be  very  shy.  He  is  a  shy 
man.  Of  this  there  is  no  doubt.  It  may  not  show  on  the 
surface,  but  the  shyness  is  there.  After  days  of  intimacy 
one  wonders  to  see  that  it  is  still  in  about  as  strong  force  as 
ever.  There  is  a  fine  and  beautiful  nature  hidden  behind  it, 
as  all  know  who  have  read  the  Uncle  Remus  book  ;  and  a 
fine  genius,  too,  as  all  know  by  the  same  sign.  I  seem  to 
be  talking  quite  freely  about  this  neighbor ;  but  in  talking 
to  the  public  I  am  but  talking  to  his  personal  friends,  and 
these  things  are  permissible  among  friends. 

He  deeply  disappointed  a  number  of  children  who  had 
flocked  eagerly  to  Mr.  Cable's  bouse  to  get  a  glimpse  of  the 
illustrious  sage  and  oracle  of  the  nation's  nurseries.  They 
said :  — 

"  Why,  he 's  white  !  " 

They  were  grieved  about  it.  So,  to  console  them,  the  book 
was  brought,  that  they  might  hear  Uncle  Remus's  Tar-Baby 
story  from  the  lips  of  Uncle  Remus  himself  —  or  what,  in 
their  outraged  eyes,  was  left  of  him.     But  it  turned  out  that 


472 


UNCLE  REMUS  APPEARS. 


he  had  never  read  aloud  to  people,  and  was  too  shy  to  venture 
the  attempt  now.     Mr.  Cable  and  I  read  from  books  of  ours, 

to  show  him  what  an  easy 
trick  it  was ;  but  his  immor- 
tal shyness  was  proof  against 
even  this  sagacious  strategy, 
so  we  had  to  read  about  Brer 
Rabbit  ourselves. 

Mr.  Harris  ought  to  be  able 
to  read  the  negro  dialect  bet- 
ter than  anybody  else,  for  in 
the  matter  of  writing  it  he  is 
the  only  master  the  country 
has  produced.  Mr.  Cable  is 
the  only  master  in  the  writing 
of  French  dialects  that  the 
country  has  produced ;  and  he 
reads  them  in  perfection.  It 
was  a  great  treat  to  hear  him 
read  about  Jean-ah  Poquelin, 
and  about  Innerarity  and  his 
famous  "  pigshoo  "  represent- 
ing "  Louisihanna  i^-fusing 
to  Hanter  the  Union,"  along 
with  passages  of  nicely-shaded 
German  dialect  from  a  novel 
which  was  still  in  manuscript. 
It  came  out  in  conversation, 
that  in  two  different  instances 
Mr.  Cable  got  into  grotesque 
trouble  by  using,  in  his  books,  next-to-impossible  French 
names  which  nevertheless  happened  to  be  borne  by  living 
and  sensitive  citizens  of  New-Orleans.  His  names  were 
either  inventions  or  were  borrowed  from  the  ancient  and 
obsolete  past,  I  do  not  now  remember  which  ;  but  at  any 
rate   living  bearers  of  them  turned  up,  and  were   a  good 


UNCLE   REMUS. 


WE  HEAD   IN  PUBLIC. 


473 


deal  hurt  at  having  attention  directed  to  themselves  and 
their  affairs  in  so  excessively  public  a  manner. 


WE   READ   ALOUD. 


Mr.  Warner  and  I  had  an  experience  of  the  same  sort 
when  we  wrote  the  book  called  "  The  Gilded  Age."  There 
is  a  character  in  it  called  "  Sellers."  I  do  not  remember 
what  his  first  name  was,  in  the  beginning  ;  but  anyway,  Mr. 
Warner  did  not  like  it,  and  wanted  it  improved.  He  asked 
me  if  I  was  able  to  imagine  a  person  named  "  Eschol 
Sellers."  Of  course  I  said  I  could  not,  without  stimulants. 
He  said  that  away  out  West,  once,  he  had  met,  and  contem- 
plated, and  actually  shaken  hands  with  a  man  bearing  that 
impossible  name  —  "  Eschol  Sellers."     He  added,  — 


474 


SUED   FOR  LIBEL. 


"  It  was  twenty  years  ago ;  his  name  has  probably  carried 
him  off  before  this ;  and  if  it  has  n't,  he  will  never  see  the 
book  anyhow.  We  will  confiscate  his  name.  The  name  you 
are  using  is  common,  and  therefore  dangerous;  there  are 
probably  a  thousand  Sellerses  bearing  it,  and  the  whole 
horde  will  come  after  us  ;  but  Eschol  Sellers  is  a  safe  name 
—  it  is  a  rock." 

So  we  borrowed  that  name  ;  and  when  the  book  had  been 
out  about  a  week,  one  of  the  stateliest  and  handsomest  and 
most  aristocratic  looking  white  men  that  ever  lived,  called 
around,  with  the  most  formidable  libel  suit  in  his  pocket 
that  ever  —  well,  in  brief,  we  got  his  permission  to  suppress 
an  edition  of  ten  million1  copies  of  the  book  and  change  that 
name  to  "  Mulberry  Sellers  "  in  future  editions. 

1  Fibres  taken  from  memory,  and  probably  incorrect.     Think  it  was  more. 


CHAPTER   XLVIII. 


SUGAR  AND    POSTAGE. 


ONE  day,  on  the  street,  I  encountered  the  man  whom,  of 
all  men,  I  most  wished  to  see — Horace  Bixby;  for- 
merly pilot  under  me  —  or  rather,  over  me  —  now  captain  of 
the  great  steamer  "  City  of  Baton  Rouge,"  the  latest  and 
swiftest  addition  to  the  Anchor  Line.  The  same  slender 
figure,  the  same  tight  curls,  the  same  springy  step,  the  same 
alertness,  the  same  decision  of  eye  and  answering  decision 
of  hand,  the  same  erect  military  bearing  ;  not  an  inch  gained 
or  lost  in  girth,  not  an  ounce  gained  or  lost  in  weight,  not 
a  hair  turned.  It  is  a  curious  thing,  to  leave  a  man  thirty- 
five  years  old,  and  come  back  at  the  end  of  twenty-one  years 
and  find  him  still  only  thirty-five.  I  have  not  had  an  experi- 
ence of  this  kind  before,  I  believe.  There  were  some  crow's- 
feet,  but  they  counted  for  next  to  nothing,  since  they  were 
inconspicuous. 

His  boat  was  just  in.  I  had  been  waiting  several  days  for 
her,  purposing  to  return  to  St.  Louis  in  her.  The  captain 
and  I  joined  a  party  of  ladies  and  gentlemen,  guests  of  Major 
Wood,  and  went  down  the  river  fifty-four  miles,  in  a  swift 
tug,  to  ex-Governor  Warmouth's  sugar  plantation.  Strung 
along  below  the  city,  were  a  number  of  decayed,  ram-shackly, 
superannuated  old  steamboats,  not  one  of  which  had  I  ever 
seen  before,,  They  had  all  been  built,  and  worn  out,  and 
thrown  aside,  since  I  was  here  last.  This  gives  one  a  real- 
izing sense  of  the  frailness  of  a  Mississippi  boat  and  the 
briefness  of  its  life. 


476  HOSPITABLE   PLANTATIONS. 

Six  miles  below  town  a  fat  and  battered  brick  chimney, 
sticking  above  the  magnolias  and  live-oaks,  was  pointed  out 
as  the  monument  erected  by  an  appreciative  nation  to  cele- 
brate the  battle  of  New  Orleans — Jackson's  victory  over  the 
British,  January  8,  1815.  The  war  had  ended,  the  two 
nations  were  at  peace,  but  the  news  had  not  yet  reached 
New  Orleans.  If  we  had  had  the  cable  telegraph  in  those 
days,  this  blood  would  not  have  been  spilt,  those  lives  would 
not  have  been  wasted ;  and  better  still,  Jackson  would  prob- 
ably never  have  been  president.  We  have  gotten  over  the 
harms  done  us  by  the  war  of  1812,  but  not  over  some  of 
those  done  us  by  Jackson's  presidency. 

The  Warmouth  plantation  covers  a  vast  deal  of  ground, 
and  the  hospitality  of  the  Warmouth  mansion  is  graduated 
to  the  same  large  scale.  We  saw  steam-plows  at  work, 
here,  for  the  first  time.  The  traction  engine  travels  about 
on  its  own  wheels,  till  it  reaches  the  required  spot;  then  it 
stands  still  and  by  means  of  a  wire  rope  pulls  the  huge  plow 
toward  itself  two  or  three  hundred  yards  across  the  field, 
between  the  rows  of  cane.  The  thing  cuts  down  into  the 
black  mould  a  foot  and  a  half  deep.  The  plow  looks  like 
a  fore-and-aft  brace  of  a  Hudson  river  steamer,  inverted. 
When  the  negro  steersman  sits  on  one  end  of  it,  that  end 
tilts  down  near  the  ground,  while  the  other  sticks  up  high  in 
air.  This  great  see-saw  goes  rolling  and  pitching  like  a  ship 
at  sea,  and  it  is  not  every  circus  rider  that  could  stay  on  it. 

The  plantation  contains  two  thousand  six  hundred  acres ; 
six  hundred  and  fifty  are  in  cane;  and  there  is  a  fruitful 
orange  grove  of  five  thousand  trees.  The  cane  is  cultivated 
after  a  modern  and  intricate  scientific  fashion,  too  elaborate 
and  complex  for  me  to  attempt  to  describe;  but  it  lost 
$40,000  last  year.  I  forget  the  other  details.  However, 
this  year's  crop  will  reach  ten  or  twelve  hundred  tons  of 
sugar,  consequently  last  year's  loss  will  not  matter.  These 
troublesome  and  expensive  scientific  methods  achieve  a  yield 
of  a  ton  and  a  half,  and  from  that  to  two  tons,  to  the  acre ; 


THE    CAPTAIN. 


SUGAR  MAKING.  479 

which  is  three  or  four  times  what  the  yield  of  an  acre  was  in 
my  time. 

The  drainage-ditches  were  everywhere  alive  with  little 
crabs— "fiddlers."  One  saw  them  scampering  sidewise  in 
every  direction  whenever  they  heard  a  disturbing  noise. 
Expensive  pests,  these  crabs ;  for  they  bore  into  the  levees, 
and  ruin  them. 

The  great  sugar-house  was  a  wilderness  of  tubs  and 
tanks  and  vats  and  filters,  pumps,  pipes,  and  machinery. 
The  process  of  making  sugar  is  exceedingly  interesting. 
First,  you  heave  your  cane  into  the  centrifugals  and  grind 
out  the  juice;  then  run  it  through  the  evaporating  pan  to 
extract  the  fibre ;  then  through  the  bone-filter  to  remove  the 
alcohol ;  then  through  the  clarifying  tanks  to  discharge  the 
molasses ;  then  through  the  granulating  pipe  to  condense  it ; 
then  through  the  vacuum  pan  to  extract  the  vacuum.  It  is 
now  ready  for  market.  I  have  jotted  these  particulars  down 
from  memory.  The  thing  looks  simple  and  easy.  Do  not 
deceive  yourself.  To  make  sugar  is  really  one  of  the  most 
difficult  things  in  the  world.  And  to  make  it  right,  is  next 
to  impossible.  If  you  will  examine  your  own  supply  every 
now  and  then  for  a  term  of  years,  and  tabulate  the  result, 
you  will  find  that  not  two  men  in  twenty  can  make  sugar 
without  getting  sand  into  it. 

We  could  have  gone  down  to  the  mouth  of  the  river  and 
visited  Captain  Eads'  great  work,  the  "  jetties,"  where  the 
river  has  been  compressed  between  walls,  and  thus  deepened 
to  twenty-six  feet ;  but  it  was  voted  useless  to  go,  since  at 
this  stage  of  the  water  everything  would  be  covered  up  and 
invisible. 

We  could  have  visited  that  ancient  and  singular  burg, 
"Pilot-town,"  which  stands  on  stilts  in  the  water  —  so  they 
say ;  where  nearly  all  communication  is  by  skiff  and  canoe, 
even  to  the  attending  of  weddings  and  funerals ;  and  where 
the  littlest  boys  and  girls  are  as  handy  with  the  oar  as 
unamphibious  children  are  with  the  velocipede. 


480 


A   RIVER   TRIP. 


We  could  have  done  a  number  of  other  things ;  but  on 
account  of  limited  time,  we  went  back  home.  The  sail  up 
the  breezy  and  sparkling  river  was  a  charming  experience, 
and  would  have  been  satisfy ingiy  sentimental  and  romantic 
but  for  the  interruptions  of  the  tug's  pet  parrot,  whose  tire- 
less comments  upon  the  scenery  and  the  guests  were  always 
this-worldly,  and  often  profane.     He  had  also  a  superabun- 


PILOT    TOWN. 


dance  of  the  discordant,  ear-splitting,  metallic  laugh  common 
to  his  breed,  —  a  machine-made  laugh,  a  Frankenstein  laugh, 
with  the  soul  left  out  of  it.  He  applied  it  to  every  senti- 
mental remark,  and  to  every  pathetic  song.  He  cackled  it 
out  with  hideous  energy  after  "  Home  again,  home  again, 
from  a  foreign  shore,"  and  said  he  "  wouldn't  give  a  damn 
for  a  tug-load  of  such  rot."  Romance  and  sentiment  can- 
not long  survive  this  sort  of  discouragement ;  so  the  singing 


A  PLEASANT   PARTY. 


481 


and  talking  presently  ceased ;  which  so  delighted  the  parrot 
that  he  cursed  himself  hoarse  for  joy. 

Then  the  male  members  of  the  party  moved  to  the  fore- 
castle, to  smoke  and  gossip.  There  were  several  old  steam- 
boatmen  along,  and  I  learned  from  them  a  great  deal  of  what 
had  been  happening  to  my  former  river  friends  during  my 


SMOKE    AND    GOSSIP. 

long  absence.  I  learned  that  a  pilot  whom  I  used  to  steer 
for  is  become  a  spiritualist,  and  for  more  than  fifteen  years 
has  been  receiving  a  letter  every  week  from  a  deceased  rela- 
tive, through  a  New  York  spiritualistic  medium  named  Man- 
chester —  postage  graduated  by  distance :  from  the  local 
post-office  in  Paradise  to  New  York,  five  dollars  ;  from  New 
York  to  St.  Louis,  three  cents.    I  remember  Mr.  Manchester 

31 


482  NEWS   FROM  ABOVE. 

very  well.  I  called  on  him  once,  ten  years  ago,  with  a 
couple  of  friends,  one  of  whom  wished  to  inquire  after  a 
deceased  uncle.  This  uncle  had  lost  his  life  in  a  peculiarly 
violent  and  unusual  way,  half  a  dozen  years  before  :  a  cyclone 
blew  him  some  three  miles  and  knocked  a  tree  down  with 
him  which  was  four  feet  through  at  the  butt  and  sixty-five 
feet  high.  He  did  not  survive  this  triumph.  At  the  seance 
just  referred  to,  my  friend  questioned  his  late  uncle,  through 
Mr.  Manchester,  and  the  late  uncle  wrote  down  his  replies, 
using  Mr.  Manchester's  hand  and  pencil  for  that  purpose. 
The  following  is  a  fair  example  of  the  questions  asked,  and 
also  of  the  sloppy  twaddle  in  the  way  of  answers,  furnished 
by  Manchester  under  the .  pretence  that  it  came  from  the 
spectre.  If  this  man  is  not  the  paltriest  fraud  that  lives, 
I  owe  him  an  apology  :  — 

Question.     Where  are  }rou  ? 

Answer.     In  the  spirit  world. 

Q.   Are  you  happy  ? 

A.    Very  happy.     Perfectly  happy. 

Q.   How  do  you  amuse  yourself  ? 

A.    Conversation  with  friends,  and  other  spirits. 

Q.   What  else? 

A.   Nothing  else.     Nothing  else  is  necessary. 

Q.   What  do  you  talk  about  ? 

A.  About  how  happy  we  are;  and  about  friends  left 
behind  in  the  earth,  and  how  to  influence  them  for  their 
good. 

Q.  When  your  friends  in  the  earth  all  get  to  the  spirit 
land,  what  shall  you  have  to  talk  about  then?  —  nothing  but 
about  how  happy  you  all  are  ? 

No  reply.  It  is  explained  that  spirits  will  not  answer 
frivolous  questions. 

Q.  How  is  it  that  spirits  that  arc  content  to  spend  an 
eternity  in  frivolous  employments,  and  accept  it  as  happi- 
ness, are  so  fastidious  about  frivolous  questions  upon  the 
subject? 


HABITS   OF   THE   SPIRIT   LAND.  483 

No  reply. 

Q.   Would  you  like  to  come  back  ? 

A.   No. 

Q.   Would  you  say  that  under  oath  ? 

A.   Yes. 

Q.   What  do  you  eat  there  ? 

A.   We  do  not  eat. 

Q.   What  do  you  drink  ? 

A.   We  do  not  drink. 

Q.   What  do  you  smoke  ? 

A.   We  do  not  smoke. 

Q.    What  do  you  read  ? 

A.   We  do  not  read. 

Q.   Do  all  the  good  people  go  to  your  place  ? 

A.   Yes. 

Q.  You  know  my  present  way  of  life.  Can  you  suggest 
any  additions  to  it,  in  the  way  of  crime,  that  will  reasonably 
insure  my  going  to  some  other  place  ? 

A.   No  reply. 

Q.   When  did  you  die  ? 

A.   I  did  not  die,  I  passed  away. 

Q.  Very  well,  then,  when  did  you  pass  away  ?  How  long 
have  you  been  in  the  spirit  land  ? 

A.    We  have  no  measurements  of  time  here. 

Q.  Though  you  may  be  indifferent  and  uncertain  as  to 
dates  and  times  in  your  present  condition  and  environment, 
this  has  nothing  to  do  with  your  former  condition.  You  had 
dates  then.  One  of  these  is  what  I  ask  for.  You  departed 
on  a  certain  day  in  a  certain  year.     Is  not  this  true  ? 

A.   Yes. 

Q.   Then  name  the  day  of  the  month. 

(Much  fumbling  with  pencil,  on  the  part  of  the  medium, 
accompanied  by  violent  spasmodic  jerkings  of  his  head  and 
body,  for  some  little  time.  Finally,  explanation  to  the  effect 
that  spirits  often  forget  dates,  such  things  being  without 
importance  to  them.) 


484 


QUEER  MEMORIES. 


Q.  Then  this  one  has  actually  forgotten  the  date  of  its 
translation  to  the  spirit  land  ? 

This  was  granted  to  be  the  case. 

Q.   This  is  very  curious.     Well,  then,  what  year  was  it  ? 

(More  fumbling,  jerking,  idiotic  spasms,  on  the  part  of  the 
medium.  Finally,  explanation  to  the  effect  that  the  spirit 
has  forgotten  the  year.) 

Q.  This  is  indeed  stupendous.  Let  me  put  one  more  ques- 
tion, one  last  question,  to  you,  before  we  part  to  meet  no 


THE    INTERVIEW. 


more;  —  for  even  if  I  fail  to  avoid  your  asylum,  a  meeting 
there  will  go  for  nothing  as  a  meeting,  since  by  that  time 
you  will  easily  have  forgotten  me  and  my  name :  did  you 
die  a  natural  death,  or  were  you  cut  off  by  a  catastrophe  ? 

A.  (After  long  hesitation  and  many  throes  and  spasms.) 
Natural  death. 

This  ended  the  interview.    My  friend  told  the  medium  that 


A   SUCCESSFUL  FRAUD. 


485 


when  his  relative  was  in  this  poor  world,  he  was  endowed 
with  an  extraordinary  intellect  and  an  absolutely  defectless 
memory,  and  it  seemed  a  great  pity  that  he  had  not  been 
allowed  to  keep  some  shred  of  these  for  his  amusement  in 
the  realms  of  everlasting  contentment,  and  for  the  amaze- 
ment and  admiration  of  the  rest  of  the  population  there. 

This  man  had  plenty  of  clients  —  has  plenty  yet.  He 
receives  letters  from  spirits  located  in  every  part  of  the 
spirit  world,  and  delivers  them  all  over  this  country  through 
the  United  States  mail.  These  letters  are  filled  with  advice 
—  advice  from  "  spirits  "  who  don't  know  as  much  as  a  tad- 
pole —  and  this  advice  is  religiously  followed  by  the  receivers. 
One  of  these  clients  was  a  man  whom  the  spirits  (if  one  may 
thus  plurally  describe  the  ingenious  Manchester)  were  teach- 
ing how  to  contrive  an  improved  railway  car-wheel.  It  is 
coarse  employment  for  a  spirit,  but  it  is  higher  and  whole- 
somer  activity  than  talking  forever  about  "  how  happy  we 
are." 


CHAPTER    XLIX. 

EPISODES   IN  PILOT  LIFE. 

IN  the  course  of  the  tug-boat  gossip,  it  came  out  that  out 
of  every  five  of  my  former  friends  who  had  quitted  the 
river,  four  had  chosen  farming  as  an  occupation.  Of  course 
this  was  not  because  they  were  peculiarly  gifted,  agricultur- 
ally, and  thus  more  likely  to  succeed  as  farmers  than  in 
other  industries :  the  reason  for  their  choice  must  be  traced 
to  some  other  source.  Doubtless  they  chose  farming  because 
that  life  is  private  and  secluded  from  irruptions  of  undesir- 
able strangers,  —  like  the  pilot-house  hermitage.  And  doubt- 
less they  also  chose  it  because  on  a  thousand  nights  of  black 
storm  and  danger  they  had  noted  the  twinkling  lights  of 
solitary  farm-houses,  as  the  boat  swung  by,  and  pictured  to 
themselves  the  serenity  and  security  and  cosiness  of  such 
refuges  at  such  times,  and  so  had  by  and  by  come  to  dream 
of  that  retired  and  peaceful  life  as  the  one  desirable  thing 
to  long  for,  anticipate,  earn,  and  at  last  enjoy. 

But  I  did  not  learn  that  any  of  these  pilot-farmers  had 
astonished  anybody  with  their  successes.  Their  farms  do 
not  support  them :  they  support  their  farms.  The  pilot- 
farmer  disappears  from  the  river  annually,  about  the  break- 
ing of  spring,  and  is  seen  no  more  till  next  frost.  Then  he 
appears  again,  in  damaged  homespun,  combs  the  hay-seed  out 
of  his  hair,  and  takes  a  pilot-house  berth  for  the  winter.  In 
this  way  he  pays  the  debts  which  his  farming  has  achieved 
during  the  agricultural  season.  So  his  river  bondage  is  but 
half  broken ;  he  is  still  the  river's  slave  the  hardest  half  of 
the  vear. 


STEAMBOAT   FARMERS.  487 

One  of  these  men  bought  a  farm,  but  did  not  retire  to  it. 
He  knew  a  trick  worth  two  of  that.  He  did  not  propose 
to  pauperize  his  farm  by  applying  his  personal  ignorance  to 
working  it.  No,  he  put  the  farm  into  the  hands  of  an  agri- 
cultural expert  to  be  worked  on  shares  —  out  of  every  three 
loads  of  corn  the  expert  to  have  two  and  the  pilot  the  third. 
But  at  the  end  of  the  season  the  pilot  received  no  corn.  The 
expert  explained  that  his  share  was  not  reached.  The  farm 
produced  only  two  loads. 

Some  of  the  pilots  whom  I  had  known  had  had  adventures  ; 
—  the  outcome  fortunate,  sometimes,  but  not  in  all  cases. 
Captain  Montgomery,  whom  I  had  steered  for  when  he  was 
a  pilot,  commanded  the  Confederate  fleet  in  the  great  battle 
before  Memphis ;  when  his  vessel  went  down,  he  swam 
ashore,  fought  his  way  through  a  squad  of  soldiers,  and 
made  a  gallant  and  narrow  escape.  He  was  always  a  cool 
man  ;  nothing  could  disturb  his  serenity.  Once  when  he  was 
captain  of  the  "  Crescent  City,"  I  was  bringing  the  boat  into 
port  at  New  Orleans,  and  momently  expecting  orders  from 
the  hurricane  deck,  but  received  none.  I  had  stopped  the 
wheels,  and  there  my  authority  and  responsibility  ceased.  It 
was  evening  —  dim  twilight  —  the  captain's  hat  was  perched 
upon  the  big  bell,  and  I  supposed  the  intellectual  end  of  the 
captain  was  in  it,  but  such  was  not  the  case.  The  captain 
was  very  strict ;  therefore  I  knew  better  than  to  touch  a 
bell  without  orders.  My  duty  was  to  hold  the  boat  steadily 
on  her  calamitous  course,  and  leave  the  consequences  to  take 
care  of  themselves  —  which  I  did.  So  we  went  plowing  past 
the  sterns  of  steamboats  and  getting  closer  and  closer  —  the 
crash  was  bound  to  come  very  soon  —  and  still  that  hat  never 
budged  ;  for  alas,  the  captain  was  napping  in  the  texas.  .  .  . 
Things  were  becoming  exceedingly  nervous  and  uncomfort- 
able. It  seemed  to  me  that  the  captain  was  not  going  to 
appear  in  time  to  see  the  entertainment.  But  he  did.  Just 
as  we  were  walking  into  the  stern  of  a  steamboat,  he  stepped 
out  on  deck,  and  said,  with  heavenly  serenity,  "  Set  her  back 


488 


A   CLOSE   CALL. 


on  both"  —  which  I  did;  but  a  trifle  late,  however,  for  the 
next  moment  we  went  smashing  through  that  other  boat's 
flimsy  outer  works  with  a  most  prodigious  racket.  The  cap- 
tain never  said  a  word  to  me  about  the  matter  afterwards, 
except  to  remark  that  I  had  done  right,  and  that  he  hoped 
I  would  not  hesitate  to  act  in  the  same  way  again  in  like 
circumstances. 

One  of  the  pilots 
whom  I  had  known 
when  I  was  on  the 
river  had  died  a  very 
honorable  death.  His 
boat  caught  fire,  and 
he  remained  at  the 
wheel  until  he  got  her 
safe  to  land.  Then 
he  went  out  over  the 
breast-board  with  his 
clothing  in  flames,  and 
was  the  last  person  to 
get  ashore.  He  died 
from  his  injuries  in 
the  course  of  two  or 
three  hours,  and  his 
was  the  only  life  lost. 

The  history  of  Mis- 
sissippi piloting  af- 
fords six  or  seven  in- 
stances of  this  sort  of  martyrdom,  and 
half  a  hundred  instances  of  escapes  from 
a  like  fate  which  came  within  a  second  or  two  of  being 
fatally  too  late  ;  but  there  is  no  instance  of  a  pilot  desert- 
ing his  post  to  save  his  life  while  by  remaining  and  sacri- 
ficing it  he  might  secure  other  lives  from  destruction.  It  is 
well  worth  while  to  set  down  this  noble  fact,  and  well 
worth  while  to  put  it  in  italics,  too. 


HEROIC   TRAINING.  489 

The  "  cub  "  pilot  is  early  admonished  to  despise  all  perils 
connected  with  a  pilot's  calling,  and  to  prefer  any  sort  of 
death  to  the  deep  dishonor  of  deserting  his  post  while  there 
is  any  possibility  of  his  being  useful  in  it.  And  so  effectively 
are  these  admonitions  inculcated,  that  even  young  and  but 
half-tried  pilots  can  be  depended  upon  to  stick  to  the  wheel, 
and  die  there  when  occasion  requires.  In  a  Memphis  grave- 
yard is  buried  a  young  fellow  who  perished  at  the  wheel  a 
great  many  years  ago,  in  White  River,  to  save  the  lives  of 
other  men.  He  said  to  the  captain  that  if  the  fire  would 
give  him  time  to  reach  a  sand  bar,  some  distance  away,  all 
could  be  saved,  but  that  to  land  against  the  bluff  bank  of 
the  river  would  be  to  insure  the  loss  of  many  lives;  He 
reached  the  bar  and  grounded  the  boat  in  shallow  water ; 
but  by  that  time  the  flames  had  closed  around  him,  and  in 
escaping  through  them  he  was  fatally  burned.  He  had  been 
urged  to  fly  sooner,  but  had  replied  as  became  a  pilot  to 
reply:  — 

"  I  will  not  go.  If  I  go,  nobody  will  be  saved  ;  if  I  stay, 
no  one  will  be  lost  but  me.     I  will  stay." 

There  were  two  hundred  persons  on  board,  and  no  life  was 
lost  but  the  pilot's.  There  used  to  be  a  monument  to  this 
young  fellow,  in  that  Memphis  graveyard.  While  we  tarried 
in  Memphis  on  our  down  trip,  I  started  out  to  look  for  it, 
but  our  time  was  so  brief  that  I  was  obliged  to  turn  back 
before  my  object  was  accomplished. 

The  tug-boat  gossip  informed  me  that  Dick  Kennet  was 
dead  —  blown  up,  near  Memphis,  and  killed  ;  that  several 
others  whom  I  had  known  had  fallen  in  the  war  —  one  or 
two  of  them  shot  down  at  the  wheel  ;  that  another  and  very 
particular  friend,  whom  I  had  steered  many  trips  for,  had 
stepped  out  of  his  house  in  New  Orleans,  one  night  years 
ago,  to  collect  some  money  in  a  remote  part  of  the  city,  and 
had  never  been  seen  again,  —  was  murdered  and  thrown  into 
the  river,  it  was  thought ;  that  Ben  Thornburgh  was  dead 
long  ago  ;  also  his  wild  "  cub  "  whom  I  used  to  quarrel  with, 


490 


A  BEAR   STORY. 


all  through  every  daylight  watch.  A  heedless,  reckless 
creature  he  was,  and  always  in  hot  water,  always  in  mis- 
chief. An  Arkansas  passenger  brought  an  enormous  bear 
aboard,  one  day,  and  chained  him  to  a  life-boat  on  the  hurri- 
cane deck.  Thornburgh's  "  cub  "  could  not  rest  till  he  had 
gone  there  and  unchained  the  bear,  to  "  see  what  he  would 
do."      He  was  promptly  gratified.      The  bear  chased  him 


THORNBUHGH S    CUB. 


around  and  around  the  deck,  for  miles  and  miles,  with  two 
hundred  eager  faces  grinning  through  the  railings  for  au- 
dience, and  finally  snatched  off  the  lad's  coat-tail  and  went 
into  the  texas  to  chew  it.  The  off-watch  turned  out  with 
alacrity,  and  left  the  bear  in  sole  possession.  He  presently 
grew  lonesome,  and  started  out  for  recreation.     He  ranged 


DANGERS   OF   THE   WHEEL. 


491 


the  whole  boat  —  visited  every  part  of  it,  with  an  advance 
guard  of  fleeing  people  in  front  of  him  and  a  voiceless 
vacancy  behind  him ;  and  when  his  owner  captured  him  at 
last,  those  two  were  the  only  visible  beings  anywhere ;  every- 
body else  was  in  hiding,  and  the  boat  was  a  solitude. 

I  was  told  that  one  of  my  pilot  friends  fell  dead  at  the 
wheel,  from  heart  disease,  in  1869.  The  captain  was  on  the 
roof  at  the  time.     He  saw  the  boat  breaking  for  the  shore  ; 


HE  CLUNG  TO  A  COTTON  BALE. 


shouted,  and  got  no  answer ;  ran  up,  and  found  the  pilot 
lying  dead  on  the  floor. 

Mr.  Bixby  had  been  blown  up,  in  Madrid  bend  ;  was  not 
injured,  but  the  other  pilot  was  lost. 

George  Ritchie  had  been  blown  up  near  Memphis  —  blown 
into  the  river  from  the  wheel,  and  disabled.  The  water  was 
very  cold  ;  he  clung  to  a  cotton  bale  —  mainly  with  his 
teeth  —  and  floated  until  nearly  exhausted,  when  he  was 
rescued  by  some  deck  hands  who  were  on  a  piece  of  the 
wreck.  They  tore  open  the  bale  and  packed  him  in  the  cot- 
ton, and  warmed  the  life  back  into  him,  and  got  him  safe 


492  FORGIVEN  TOO  MUCH. 

to  Memphis.  He  is  one  of  Bixby's  pilots  on  the  "  Baton 
Rouge  "  now. 

Into  the  life  of  a  steamboat  clerk,  now  dead,  had  dropped 
a  bit  of  romance,  —  somewhat  grotesque  romance,  but  ro- 
mance nevertheless.  When  I  knew  him  he  was  a  shiftless 
young  spendthrift,  boisterous,  good-hearted,  full  of  careless 
generosities,  and  pretty  conspicuously  promising  to  fool 
his  possibilities  away  early,  and  come  to  nothing.  In  a 
Western  city  lived  a  rich  and  childless  old  foreigner  and 
his  wife  ;  and  in  their  family  was  a  comely  young  girl  —  sort 
of  friend,  sort  of  servant.  The  young  clerk  of  whom  I  have 
been  speaking,  —  whose  name  was  not  George  Johnson,  but 
who  shall  be  called  George  Johnson  for  the  purposes  of  this 
narrative,  —  got  acquainted  with  this  young  girl,  and  they 
sinned  ;  and  the  old  foreigner  found  them  out,  and  rebuked 
them.  Being  ashamed,  they  lied,  and  said  they  were  married ; 
that  they  had  been  privately  married.  Then  the  old  foreign- 
er's hurt  was  healed,  and  he  forgave  and  blessed  them.  After 
that,  they  were  able  to  continue  their  sin  without  concealment. 
By  and  by  the  foreigner's  wife  died ;  and  presently  he  followed 
after  her.  Friends  of  the  family  assembled  to  mourn  ;  and 
among  the  mourners  sat  the  two  young  sinners.  The  will 
was  opened  and  solemnly  read.  It  bequeathed  every  penny 
of  that  old  man's  great  wealth  to  Mrs.  George  Johnson  ! 

And  there  was  no  such  person.  The  young  sinners  fled 
forth  then,  and  did  a  very  foolish  thing :  married  themselves 
before  an  obscure  Justice  of  the  Peace,  and  got  him  to  ante- 
date the  thing.  That  did  no  sort  of  good.  The  distant 
relatives  flocked  in  and  exposed  the  fraudful  date  with 
extreme  suddenness  and  surprising  ease,  and  carried  off  the 
fortune,  leaving  the  Johnsons  very  legitimately,  and  legally, 
and  irrevocably  chained  together  in  honorable  marriage,  but 
with  not  so  much  as  a  penny  to  bless  themselves  withal. 
Such  are  the  actual  facts ;  and  not  all  novels  have  for  a  base 
sO  telling  a  situation. 


CHAPTER   L. 

THE   "ORIGINAL  JACOBS." 

WE  had  some  talk  about  Captain  Isaiah  Sellers,  now 
many  years  dead.  He  was  a  fine  man,  a  high- 
minded  man,  and  greatly  respected  both  ashore  and  on  the 
river.  He  was  very  tall,  well  built,  and  handsome  ;  and  in 
his  old  age  —  as  I  remember  him  —  his  hair  was  as  black 
as  an  Indian's,  and  his  eye  and  hand  were  as  strong  and 
steady  and  his  nerve  and  judgment  as  firm  and  clear  as 
anybody's,  young  or  old,  among  the  fraternity  of  pilots.  He 
was  the  patriarch  of  the  craft ;  he  had  been  a  keelboat  pilot 
before  the  day  of  steamboats  ;  and  a  steamboat  pilot  before 
any  other  steamboat  pilot,  still  surviving  at  the  time  I  speak 
of,  had  ever  turned  a  wheel.  Consequently  his  brethren  held 
him  in  the  sort  of  awe  in  which  illustrious  survivors  of  a  by- 
gone age  are  always  held  by  their  associates.  He  knew  how 
he  was  regarded,  and  perhaps  this  fact  added  some  trifle  of 
stiffening  to  his  natural  dignity,  which  had  been  sufficiently 
stiff  in  its  original  state. 

He  left  a  diary  behind  him  ;  but  apparently  it  did  not  date 
back  to  his  first  steamboat  trip,  which  was  said  to  be  1811, 
the  year  the  first  steamboat  disturbed  the  waters  of  the  Mis- 
sissippi. At  the  time  of  his  death  a  correspondent  of  the 
"  St.  Louis  Republican  "  culled  the  following  items  from  the 
diary :  — 

"  In  February,  1825,  he  shipped  on  board  the  steamer  '  Eambler,' 
at  Florence,  Ala.,  and  made  during  that  year  three  trips  to  New 


494  RIVER  HISTORY. 

Orleans  and  back,  —  this  on  the  '  Gen.  Carrol,'  between  Nashville 
and  New  Orleans.  It  was  during  his  stay  on  this  boat  that  Captain 
Sellers  introduced  the  tap  of  the  bell  as  a  signal  to  heave  the  lead, 
previous  to  which  time  it  was  the  custom  for  the  pilot  to  speak  to 
the  men  below  when  soundings  were  wanted.  The  proximity  of 
the  forecastle  to  the  pilot-house,  no  doubt,  rendered  this  an  easy 
matter ;  but  how  different  on  one  of  our  palaces  of  the  jjresent 
day. 

"In  1827  we  find  him  on  board  the  '  President,'  a  boat  of  two 
hundred  and  eighty-five  tons  burden,  and  plying  between  Smitldand 
and  New  Orleans.  Thence  he  joined  the  '  Jubilee  '  in  1828,  and 
on  this  boat  he  did  his  first  piloting  in  the  St.  Louis  trade  ;  his  first 
watch  extending  from  Herculaneum  to  St.  Genevieve.  On  May  26, 
1836,  he  completed  and  left  Pittsburg  in  charge  of  the  steamer 
'  Prairie,'  a  boat  of  four  hundred  tons,  and  the  first  steamer  with  a 
state-room  cabin  ever  seen  at  St.  Louis.  In  1857  he  introduced  the 
signal  for  meeting  boats,  and  which  has,  with  some  slight  change, 
been  the  universal  custom  of  this  day  ;  in  fact,  is  rendered  obligatory 
by  act  of  Congress. 

"  As  general  items  of  river  history,  we  quote  the  following 
marginal  notes  from  his  general  log  :  — 

"  In  March,  1825,  Gen.  Lafayette  left  New  Orleans  for  St.  Louis 
on  the  low-pressure  steamer  '  Natchez.' 

"In  January,  1828,  twenty-one  steamers  left  the  New  Orleans 
wharf  to  celebrate  the  occasion  of  Gen.  Jackson's  visit  to  that  city. 

"  In  1830  the  '  North  American'  made  the  run  from  New  Orleans 
to  Memphis  in  six  days  —  best  time  on  record  to  that  date.  It  has 
since  been  made  in  two  days  and  ten  hours. 

"In  1831  the  Red  River  cut-off  formed. 

"In  1832  steamer  '  Hudson  '  made  the  run  from  White  River  to 
Helena,  a  distance  of  seventy-five  miles,  in  twelve  hours.  This  was 
the  source  of  much  talk  and  speculation  among  parties  directly 
interested. 

"  In  1839  Great  Horseshoe  cut-off  formed. 

"  Up  to  the  present  time,  a  term  of  thirty-five  years,  we  ascertain, 
by  reference  to  the  diary,  he  has  made  four  hundred  and  sixty  round 
trips  to  New  Orleans,  which  gives  a  distance  of  one  million  one 
hundred  and  four  thousand  miles,  or  an  average  of  eighty-six  miles 
a  day." 


OVERPOWERING   WEAKNESS. 


495 


Whenever  Captain  Sellers  approached  a  body  of  gossiping 
pilots,  a  chill  fell  there,  and  talking  ceased.  For  this  reason  : 
whenever  six  pilots  were  gathered  together,  there  would 
always  he  one  or  two  newly  fledged  ones  in  the  lot,  and  the 
elder  ones  would  be  always  "  showing  off  "  before  these  poor 


A   CHILL   TELL  THERE. 


fellows  ;  making  them  sorrowfully  feel  how  callow  they  were, 
how  recent  their  nobility,  and  how  humble  their  degree,  by 
talking  largely  and  vaporously  of  old-time  experiences  on 
the  river  ;  always  making  it  a  point  to  date  everything  back 
as  far  as  they  could,  so  as  to  make  the  new  men  feel  their 
newness  to  the  sharpest  degree  possible,  and  envy  the  old 


496  AN  ANCIENT  MARINER. 

stagers  in  the  like  degree.  And  how  these  complacent  bald- 
heads  would  swell,  and  brag,  and  lie,  and  date  back  —  ten, 
fifteen,  twenty  years,  —  and  how  they  did  enjoy  the  effect 
produced  upon  the  marvelling  and  envying  youngsters  ! 

And  perhaps  just  at  this  happy  stage  of  the  proceedings, 
the  stately  figure  of  Captain  Isaiah  Sellers,  that  real  and  only 
genuine  Son  of  Antiquity,  would  drift  solemnly  into  the  midst. 
Imagine  the  size  of  the  silence  that  would  result  on  the  in- 
stant. And  imagine  the  feelings  of  those  bald-heads,  and  the 
exultation  of  their  recent  audience  when  the  ancient  captain 
would  begin  to  drop  casual  and  indifferent  remarks  of  a  re- 
miniscent nature,  —  about  islands  that  had  disappeared,  and 
cut-offs  that  had  been  made,  a  generation  before  the  oldest 
bald-head  in  the  company  had  ever  set  his  foot  in  a  pilot- 
house ! 

Many  and  many  a  time  did  this  ancient  mariner  appear 
on  the  scene  in  the  above  fashion,  and  spread  disaster  and 
humiliation  around  him.  If  one  might  believe  the  pilots,  he 
always  dated  his  islands  back  to  the  misty  dawn  of  river 
history  ;  and  he  never  used  the  same  island  twice  ;  and 
never  did  he  employ  an  island  that  still  existed,  or  give  one 
a  name  which  anybody  present  was  old  enough  to  have  heard 
of  before.  If  you  might  believe  the  pilots,  he  was  always 
conscientiously  particular  about  little  details  ;  never  spoke 
of  "the  State  of  Mississippi,"  for  instance,  —  no,  he  would 
say,  "  When  the  State  of  Mississippi  was  where  Arkansas 
now  is  ;  "  and  would  never  speak  of  Louisiana  or  Missouri  in 
a  general  way,  and  leave  an  incorrect  impression  on  your 
mind,  —  no,  he  would  say,  "  When  Louisiana  was  up  the 
river  farther,"  or  "  When  Missouri  was  on  the  Illinois  side." 

The  old  gentleman  was  not  of  literary  turn  or  capacity, 
but  he  used  to  jot  down  brief  paragraphs  of  plain  practical 
information  about  the  river,  and  sign  them  "  Mark  Twain," 
and  give  them  to  the  "  New  Orleans  Picayune."  They  related 
to  the  stage  and  condition  of  the  river,  and  were  accurate  and 
valuable  ;  and  thus  far,  they  contained  no  poison.     But  in 


SELLERS   BURLESQUED.  497 

speaking  of  the  stage  of  the  river  to-day,  at  a  given  point, 
the  captain  was  pretty  apt  to  drop  in  a  little  remark  about 
this  being  the  first  time  he  had  seen  the  water  so  high  or  so 
low  at  that  particular  point  for  forty-nine  years  ;  and  now 
and  then  he  would  mention  Island  so  and  so,  and  follow  it, 
in  parentheses,  with  some  such  observation  as  "  disappeared 
in  1807,  if  I  remember  rightly."  In  these  antique  interjec- 
tions lay  poison  and  bitterness  for  the  other  old  pilots,  and 
they  used  to  chaff  the  "  Mark  Twain  "  paragraphs  with  un- 
sparing mockery. 

It  so  chanced  that  one  of  these  paragraphs 1  became  the 
text  for  my  first  newspaper  article.  I  burlesqued  it  broadly, 
very  broadly,  stringing  my  fantastics  out  to  the  extent  of 
eight  hundred  or  a  thousand  words.  I  was  a  "  cub  "  at  the 
time.  I  showed  my  performance  to  some  pilots,  and  they 
eagerly  rushed  it  into  print  in  the  "  New  Orleans  True 
Delta."  It  was  a  great  pity  ;  for  it  did  nobody  any  worthy 
service,  and  it  sent  a  pang  deep  into  a  good  man's  heart. 
There  was  no  malice  in  my  rubbish ;  but  it  laughed  at  the 
captain.  It  laughed  at  a  man  to  whom  such  a  thing  was 
new  and  strange  and  dreadful.  I  did  not  know  then,  though 
I  do  now,  that  there  is  no  suffering  comparable  with  that 
which  a  private  person  feels  when  he  is  for  the  first  time 
pilloried  in  print. 

Captain  Sellers  did  me  the  honor  to  profoundly  detest  me 
from  that  day  forth.  When  I  say  he  did  me  the  honor,  I  am 
not  using  empty  words.  It  was  a  very  real  honor  to  be  in 
the  thoughts  of  so  great  a  man  as  Captain  Sellers,  and  I  had 

1  The  original  MS.  of  it,  in  the  captain's  own  hand,  has  been  sent  to  me 
from  New  Orleans.     It  reads  as  follows  :  — 

"  Vicksbdrg,  May  4,  1859. 
"  My  opinion  for  the  benefit  of  the  citizens  of  New  Orleans  :  The  water  is 
higher  this  far  up  than  it  has  been  since  1815.  My  opinion  is  that  the  water 
will  be  4  feet  deep  in  Canal  street  before  the  first  of  next  June.  Mrs.  Turner's 
plantation  at  the  head  of  Big  Black  Island  is  all  under  water,  and  it  has  not 
been  since  1815. 

"  I.  Sellers." 

32 


498 


CONFISCATION. 


wit  enough  to  appreciate  it  and  be  proud  of  it.  It  was  dis- 
tinction to  be  loved  by  such  a  man ;  but  it  was  a  much 
greater  distinction  to  be  hated  by  him,  because  he  loved 
scores  of  people ;  but  he  did  n't  sit  up  nights  to  hate  any- 
body but  me. 

He    never 
printed    an- 
other  para- 
graph   while 
he  lived,  and 
he  never  again 
signed  "  Mark 
Twain"     to 
anything.    At 
the  time  that 
the   telegraph 
brought  the 
news    of    his 
death,   I    was 
on  the  Pacific 
coast.      I  was 
a    fresh    new 
journalist,  and 
needed  a  nom 
de  guerre;  so 
I    confiscated 
the    ancient 
mariner's  dis- 
carded    one, 
and  have  done 
my  best  to  make  it  remain  what  it  was 
in  his  hands  —  a  sign  and  symbol  and 
warrant   that  whatever  is  found  in  its 
company  may  be  gambled  on  as  being  the  petrified  truth ; 
how  I  have  succeeded,  it  would  not  be  modest  in  me  to  say. 
The  captain  had  an  honorable  pride  in  his  profession  and 


SELLERS  S   MONUMENT. 


A  BEAUTIFUL   SIGHT. 


499 


an  abiding  love  for  it.  He  ordered  his  monument  before  he 
died,  and  kept  it  near  him  until  he  did  die.  It  stands  over 
his  grave  now,  in  Bellefontaine  cemetery,  St.  Louis.  It  is 
his  image,  in  marble,  standing  on  duty  at  the  pilot  wheel ; 
and  worthy  to  stand  and  confront  criticism,  for  it  represents 
a  man  who  in  life  would  have  staid  there  till  he  burned  to  a 
cinder,  if  duty  required  it. 

The  finest  thing  we  saw  on  our  whole  Mississippi  trip,  we 
saw  as  we  approached  New  Orleans  in  the  steam-tug.  This 
was  the  curving  frontage  of  the  crescent  city  lit  up  with  the 
white  glare  of  five  miles  of  electric  lights.  It  was  a  wonder- 
ful sight,  and  very  beautiful. 


CHAPTER   LL 


REMINISCENCES. 


WE  left  for  St.  Louis  in  the  "  City  of  Baton  Rouge,"  on 
a  delightfully  hot  day,  but  with  the  main  purpose  of 
my  visit  but  lamely  accomplished.  I  had  hoped  to  hunt  up 
and  talk  with  a  hundred  steamboatmen,  but  got  so  pleas- 
antly involved  in  the  social  life  of  the  town  that  I  got  noth- 
ing more  than  mere  five-minute  talks  with  a  couple  of  dozen 
of  the  craft. 

I  was  on  the  bench  of  the  pilot-house  when  we  backed  out 
and  "  straightened  up"  for  the  start  —  the  boat  pausing  for 
a  "good  ready,"  in  the  old-fashioned  way,  and  the  black 
smoke  piling  out  of  the  chimneys  equally  in  the  old-fashioned 
way.  Then  we  began  to  gather  momentum,  and  presently 
were  fairly  under  way  and  booming  along.  It  was  all  as 
natural  and  familiar  —  and  so  were  the  shoreward  sights  — 
as  if  there  had  been  no  break  in  my  river  life.  There  was 
a  "  cub,"  and  I  judged  that  he  would  take  the  wheel  now ; 
and  he  did.  Captain  Bixby  stepped  into  the  pilot-house. 
Presently  the  cub  closed  up  on  the  rank  of  steamships.  He 
made  me  nervous,  for  he  allowed  too  much  water  to  show 
between  our  boat  and  the  ships.  I  knew  quite  well  what  was 
going  to  happen,  because  I  could  date  back  in  my  own  life 
and  inspect  the  record.  The  captain  looked  on,  during  a 
silent  half-minute,  then  took  the  wheel  himself,  and  crowded 
the  boat  in,  till  she  went  scraping  along  within  a  hand-breadth 
of  the  ships.  It  was  exactly  the  favor  which  he  had  done 
me,  about  a  quarter  of  a  century  before,  in  that  same  spot, 


RUNNING  BY  CHART. 


501 


the  first  time  I  ever  steamed  out  of  the  port  of  New  Orleans. 
It  was  a  very  great  and  sincere  pleasure  to  me  to  see  the 
thing  repeated — with  somebody  else  as  victim. 

We  made  Natchez  (three  hundred  miles)  in  twenty-two 
hours  and  a 
half,  —  much 
the  swiftest  pas- 
sage  I  have 
ever  made  over 
that  piece  of 
water. 

The  next 
morning  I  came 
on  with  the  four 
o'clock  watch, 
and  saw  Ritchie 
successfully 
run  half  a  doz- 
en crossings  in 
a  fog,  using  for 
his  guidance  the 
marked  chart 
devised  and  pa- 
tented by  Bixby 
and  himself. 
This  sufficiently 
evidenced  the 
great  value  of 
the  chart. 

By  and  by, 
when  the  fog 
began  to  clear  off,  I  noticed  that  the  reflection  of  a  tree  in 
the  smooth  water  of  an  overflowed  bank,  six  hundred  yards 
away,  was  stronger  and  blacker  than  the  ghostly  tree  itself. 
The  faint  spectral  trees,  dimly  glimpsed  through  the  shred- 
ding fog,  were  very  pretty  things  to  see. 


I  AM   ANXIOUS  ABOUT   THE   TIME. 


502  AN  ANXIOUS   STORM.     . 

We  had  a  heavy  thunder-storm  at  Natchez,  another  at 
Vicksburg,  and  still  another  about  fifty  miles  below  Mem- 
phis. They  had  an  old-fashioned  energy  which  had  long 
been  unfamiliar  to  me.  This  third  storm  was  accompanied 
by  a  raging  wind.  We  tied  up  to  the  bank  when  we  saw  the 
tempest  coming,  and  everybody  left  the  pilot-house  but  me. 
The  wind  bent  the  young  trees  down,  exposing  the  pale 
underside  of  the  leaves  ;  and  gust  after  gust  followed,  in  quick 
succession,  thrashing  the  branches  violently  up  and  down, 
and  to  this  side  and  that,  and  creating  swift  waves  of  alter- 
nating green  and  white  according  to  the  side  of  the  leaf 
that  was  exposed,  and  these  waves  raced  after  each  other 
as  do  their  kind  over  a  wind-tossed  field  of  oats.  No  color 
that  was  visible  anywhere  was  quite  natural, —  all  tints  were 
charged  with  a  leaden  tinge  from  the  solid  cloud-bank  over- 
head. The  river  was  leaden ;  all  distances  the  same;  and 
even  the  far-reaching  ranks  of  combing  white-caps  were  dully 
shaded  by  the  dark,  rich  atmosphere  through  which  their 
swarming  legions  marched.  The  thunder-peals  were  con- 
stant and  deafening ;  explosion  followed  explosion  with  but 
inconsequential  intervals  between,  and  the  reports  grew 
steadily  sharper  and  higher-keyed,  and  more  trying  to  the 
ear ;  the  lightning  was  as  diligent  as  the  thunder,  and  pro- 
duced effects  which  enchanted  the  eye  and  sent  electric  ecsta- 
sies of  mixed  delight  and  apprehension  shivering  along 
every  nerve  in  the  body  in  unintermittent  procession.  The 
rain  poured  down  in  amazing  volume ;  the  ear-splitting 
thunder-peals  broke  nearer  and  nearer ;  the  wind  increased 
in  fury  and  began  to  wrench  off  boughs  and  tree-tops  and 
send  them  sailing  away  through  space ;  the  pilot-house  fell 
to  rocking  and  straining  and  cracking  and  surging,  and  I 
went  down  in  the  hold  to  see  what  time  it  was. 

People  boast  a  good  deal  about  Alpine  thunder-storms; 
but  the  storms  which  I  have  had  the  luck  to  see  in  the  Alps 
were  not  the  equals  of  some  which  I  have  seen  in  the  Mis- 
sissippi Valley.     I  may  not  have  seen  the  Alps  do  their  best, 


THE  WASTE   OF   HURRY.  503 

of  course,  and  if  they  can  beat  the  Mississippi,  I  don't 
wish  to. 

On  this  up  trip  I  saw  a  little  towhead  (infant  island)  half 
a  mile  long,  which  had  been  formed  during  the  past  nineteen 
years.  Since  there  was  so  much  time  to  spare  that  nineteen 
years  of  it  could  be  devoted  to  the  construction  of  a  mere 
towhead,  where  was  the  use,  originally,  in  rushing  this  whole 
globe  through  in  six  days  ?  It  is  likely  that  if  more  time  had 
been  taken,  in  the  first  place,  the  world  would  hare  been 
made  right,  and  this  ceaseless  improving  and  repairing 
would  not  be  necessary  now.  But  if  you  hurry  a  world  or 
a  house,  you  are  nearly  sure  to  find  out  by  and  by,  that  you 
have  left  out  a  towhead,  or  a  broom-closet,  or  some  other 
little  convenience,  here  and  there,  which  has  got  to  be  sup- 
plied, no  matter  how  much  expense  and  vexation  it  may 
cost. 

We  had  a  succession  of  black  nights,  going  up  the  river, 
and  it  was  observable  that  whenever  we  landed,  and  sud- 
denly inundated  the  trees  with  the  intense  sunburst  of  the 
electric  light,  a  certain  curious  effect  was  always  produced  : 
hundreds  of  birds  flocked  instantly  out  from  the  masses  of 
shining  green  foliage,  and  went  careering  hither  and  thither 
through  the  white  rays,  and  often  a  song-bird  tuned  up  and 
fell  to  singing.  We  judged  that  they  mistook  this  superb 
artificial  day  for  the  genuine  article. 

We  had  a  delightful  trip  in  that  thoroughly  well-ordered 
steamer,  and  regretted  that  it  was  accomplished  so  speedily. 
By  means  of  diligence  and  activity,  we  managed  to  hunt  out 
nearly  all  the  old  friends.  One  was  missing,  however ;  he 
went  to  his  reward,  whatever  it  was,  two  years  ago.  But  I 
found  out  all  about  him.  His  case  helped  me  to  realize  how 
lasting  can  be  the  effect  of  a  very  trifling  occurrence. 
When  he  was  an  apprentice-blacksmith  in  our  village,  and 
I  a  schoolboy,  a  couple  of  young  Englishmen  came  to  the 
town  and  sojourned  a  while ;  and  one  day  they  got  them- 
selves up  in  cheap  royal  finery  and  did  the  Richard  III. 


504 


A   VILLAGE   TRAGEDIAN. 


sword-fight  with  maniac  energy  and  prodigious  powwow,  in 
the  presence  of  the  village  boys.     This  blacksmith  cub  was 

there,  and  the  histri- 
onic poison  entered 
his  bones.  This  vast, 
lumbering,  ignorant, 
dull-witted  lout  was 
stage-struck,  and  irre- 
coverably. He  disap- 
peared, and  presently 
turned  up  in  St.  Louis. 
I  ran  across  him  there, 
by  and  by.  He  was 
standing  musing  on  a 
street  corner,  with  his 
right  hand  on  his  hip, 
the  thumb  of  his  left 
supporting  his  chin, 
face  bowed  and  frown- 
ing, slouch  hat  pulled 
down  over  his  fore- 
head —  imagining 
himself  to  be  Othello 
or  some  such  charac- 
ter, and  imagining 
that  the  passing  crowd 
marked  his  tragic 
bearing  and  were  awe- 
struck. 

I  joined   him,  and 
tried  to  get  him  down 
out  of  the  clouds,  but 
did  not  succeed.  How- 
ever, he  casually  informed  me,  presently,  that  he  was  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Walnut  Street  theatre  company, —  and  he  tried 
to  say  it  with  indifference,  but  the  indifference  was  thin,  and 


STAGE-STRUCK. 


TALENT  IN  A  NAPKIN.  505 

a  mighty  exultation  showed  through  it.  He  said  he  was 
cast  for  a  part  in  Julius  Caesar,  for  that  night,  and  if  I  should 
come  I  would  see  him.  If  I  should  come  !  I  said  I  would  n't 
miss  it  if  I  were  dead. 

I  went  away  stupefied  with  astonishment,  and  saying  to 
myself,  "  How  strange  it  is !  we  always  thought  this  fellow  a 
fool ;  yet  the  moment  he  comes  to  a  great  city,  where  intel- 
ligence and  appreciation  abound,  the  talent  concealed  in  this 
shabby  napkin  is  at  once  discovered,  and  promptly  welcomed 
and  honored." 

But  I  came  away  from  the  theatre  that  night  disappointed 
and  offended ;  for  I  had  had  no  glimpse  of  my  hero,  and  his 
name  was  not  in  the  bills.  I  met  him  on  the  street  the  next 
morning,  and  before  I  could  speak,  he  asked :  — 

"  Did  you  see  me  ?  " 

"  No,  you  were  n't  there." 

He  looked  surprised  and  disappointed.     He  said :  — 

"  Yes,  I  was.     Indeed  I  was.     I  was  a  Roman  soldier." 

"  Which  one  ? " 

"  Why,  did  n't  you  see  them  Roman  soldiers  that  stood 
back  there  in  a  rank,  and  sometimes  marched  in  procession 
around  the  stage  ? " 

"  Do  you  mean  the  Roman  army  ?  —  those  six  sandalled 
roustabouts  in  nightshirts,  with  tin  shields  and  helmets,  that 
marched  around  treading  on  each  other's  heels,  in  charge  of 
a  spider-legged  consumptive  dressed  like  themselves  ? " 

"  That 's  it !  that 's  it !  I  was  one  of  them  Roman  sol- 
diers. I  was  the  next  to  the  last  one.  A  half  a  year  ago  I 
used  to  always  be  the  last  one  ;  but  I  've  been  promoted." 

Well,  they  told  me  that  that  poor  fellow  remained  a 
Roman  soldier  to  the  last  —  a  matter  of  thirty-four  years. 
Sometimes  they  cast  him  for  a  "  speaking  part,"  but  not  an 
elaborate  one.  He  could  be  trusted  to  go  and  say,  "  My  lord, 
the  carriage  waits,"  but  if  they  ventured  to  add  a  sentence  or 
two  to  this,  his  memory  felt  the  strain  and  he  was  likely  to 
miss  fire.     Yet,  poor  devil,  he  had  been  patiently  studying 


506 


A   STARTLING   SUMMONS. 


the  part  of  Hamlet  for  more  than  thirty  years,  and  he  lived 
and  died  in  the  belief  that  some  day  he  would  be  invited  to 
play  it ! 

And  this  is  what  came  of  that  fleeting  visit  of  those 
young  Englishmen  to  our  village  such  ages  and  ages  ago ! 
What  noble  horseshoes  this  man  might  have  made,  but  for 

those  Eng- 
lishmen; and 
what  an  in- 
adequate Ro- 
man soldier 
he  did  make ! 
A  day  or 
two  after 
we  reached 
St.  Louis,  I 
was  walking 
along  Fourth 
Street  when  a 
grizzly -head- 
ed man  gave 
a  sort  of 
start  as  he 
passed  me, 
then  stopped, 
came  back, 
inspected  me 

narrowly,  with  a  clouding  brow,  and  finally  said  with  deep 
asperity :  — 

"  Look  here,  have  you  got  that  drink  yet  ?  " 
A  maniac,  I  judged,  at  first.      But  all  in  a  flash  I  recog- 
nized him.     I  made  an  effort  to  blush  that  strained  every 
muscle  in  me,  and  answered  as  sweetly  and  winningly  as 
ever  I  knew  how  :  — 

"  Been  a  little  slow,  but  am  just  this  minute  closing  in  on 
the  place  where  they  keep  it.     Come  in  and  help." 


LOOK  HERE,  HAVE  YOU  GOT  THAT  DRINK  YET? 


THIRTY   YEARS   AGO.  507 

He  softened,  and  said  make  it  a  bottle  of  champagne  and 
he  was  agreeable.  He  said  he  had  seen  my  name  in  the 
papers,  and  had  put  all  his  affairs  aside  and  turned  out, 
resolved  to  find  me  or  die  ;  and  make  me  answer  that  ques- 
tion satisfactorily,  or  kill  me ;  though  the  most  of  his  late 
asperity  had  been  rather  counterfeit  than  otherwise. 

This  meeting  brought  back  to  me  the  St.  Louis  riots  of 
about  thirty  years  ago.  I  spent  a  week  there,  at  that  time, 
in  a  boarding-house,  and  had  this  young  fellow  for  a  neigh- 
bor across  the  hall.  We  saw  some  of  the  fightings  and  kill- 
ings ;  and  by  and  by  we  went  one  night  to  an  armory  where 
two  hundred  young  men  had  met,  upon  call,  to  be  armed 
and  go  forth  against  the  rioters,  under  command  of  a  mili- 
tary man.  We  drilled  till  about  ten  o'clock  at  night ;  then 
news  came  that  the  mob  were  in  great  force  in  the  lower 
end  of  the  town,  and  were  sweeping  everything  before  them. 
Our  column  moved  at  once.  It  was  a  very  hot  night,  and 
my  musket  was  very  heavy.  We  marched  and  marched  ; 
and  the  nearer  we  approached  the  seat  of  war,  the  hotter  I 
grew  and  the  thirstier  I  got.  I  was  behind  my  friend  ;  so, 
finally,  I  asked  him  to  hold  my  musket  while  I  dropped  out 
and  got  a  drink.  Then  I  branched  off  and  went  home.  I 
was  not  feeling  any  solicitude  about  him  of  course,  because  I 
knew  he  was  so  well  armed,  now,  that  he  could  take  care  of 
himself  without  any  trouble.  If  I  had  had  any  doubts  about 
that,  I  would  have  borrowed  another  musket  for  him.  I  left 
the  city  pretty  early  the  next  morning,  and  if  this  grizzled 
man  had  not  happened  to  encounter  my  name  in  the  papers 
the  other  day  in  St.  Louis,  and  felt  moved  to  seek  me  out,  I 
should  have  carried  to  my  grave  a  heart-torturing  uncer- 
tainty as  to  whether  he  ever  got  out  of  the  riots  all  right  or 
not.  I  ought  to  have  inquired,  thirty  years  ago  ;  I  know 
that.  And  I  would  have  inquired,  if  I  had  had  the  muskets  ; 
but,  in  the  circumstances,  he  seemed  better  fixed  to  conduct 
the  investigations  than  I  was. 

One  Monday,  near  the  time  of  our  visit  to  St.  Louis,  the 


508 


STATISTICS. 


"  Globe-Democrat"  came  out  with  a  couple  of  pages  of  Sunday 
statistics,  whereby  it  appeared  that  119,448  St.  Louis  people 
attended  the  morning  and  evening  church  services  the  day 
before,  and  23,102  children  attended  Sunday-school.  Thus 
142,550  persons,  out  of  the  city's  total  of  400,000  popu- 
lation, respected  the  day  religious-wise.  I  found  these 
statistics,  in  a  condensed  form,  in  a  telegram  of  the  Associ- 
ated Press,  and  preserved  them.  They  made  it  apparent 
that  St.  Louis  was  in  a  higher  state  of  grace  than  she  could 
have  claimed  to  be  in  my  time.  But  now  that  I  canvass  the 
figures  narrowly,  I  suspect  that  the  telegraph  mutilated  them. 
It  cannot  be  that  there  are  more  than  150,000  Catholics  in 
the  town  ;  the  other  250,000  must  be  classified  as  Protest- 
ants. Out  of  these  250,000,  according  to  this  questionable 
telegram,  only  26,362  attended  church  and  Sunday-school, 
while  out  of  the  150,000  Catholics,  116,188  went  to  church 
and  Sunday-school. 


"iMi'H; 


%      r     ,     I     1     VI  lift'; 

Km  ...*;  )fitm 

m 


CHAPTER  LH. 

A  BURNING  BRAND. 

ALL  at  once  the  thought  came  into  my  mind,  "  I  have 
not  sought  out  Mr.  Brown." 

Upon  that  text  I  desire  to  depart  from  the  direct  line  of 
my  subject,  and  make  a  little  excursion.  I  wish  to  reveal 
a  secret  which  I  have  carried  with  me  nine  years,  and  which 
has  become  burdensome. 

Upon  a  certain  occasion,  nine  years  ago,  I  had  said,  with 
strong  feeling,  "  If  ever  I  see  St.  Louis  again,  I  will  seek  out 
Mr.  Brown,  the  great  grain  merchant,  and  ask  of  him  the 
privilege  of  shaking  him  by  the  hand." 

The  occasion  and  the  circumstances  were  as  follows.  A 
friend  of  mine,  a  clergyman,  came  one  evening  and  said :  — 

"  I  have  a  most  remarkable  letter  here,  which  I  want  to 
read  to  you,  if  I  can  do  it  without  breaking  down.  I  must 
preface  it  with  some  explanations,  however.  The  letter  is 
written  by  an  ex-thief  and  ex-vagabond  of  the  lowest  origin 
and  basest  rearing,  a  man  all  stained  with  crime  and  steeped 
in  ignorance ;  but,  thank  God,  with  a  mine  of  pure  gold  hid- 
den away  in  him,  as  you  shall  see.  His  letter  is  written  to 
a  burglar  named  Williams,  who  is  serving  a  nine-year  term 
in  a  certain  State  prison,  for  burglary.  Williams  was  a 
particularly  daring  burglar,  and  plied  that  trade  during  a 
number  of  years ;  but  he  was  caught  at  last  and  jailed,  to 
await  trial  in  a  town  where  he  had  broken  into  a  house  at 
night,  pistol  in  hand,  and  forced  the  owner  to  hand  over  to 


510  A   HARVARD  BURGLAR. 

him  $8,000  in  government  bonds.  Williams  was  not  a  com- 
mon sort  of  person,  by  any  means ;  he  was  a  graduate  of 
Harvard  College,  and  came  of  good  New  England  stock. 
His  father  was  a  clergyman.  While  lying  in  jail,  his  health 
began  to  fail,  and  he  was  threatened  with  consumption. 
This  fact,  together  with  the  opportunity  for  reflection 
afforded  by  solitary  confinement,  had  its  effect  —  its  natural 
effect.  He  fell  into  serious  thought ;  his  early  training 
asserted  itself  with  power,  and  wrought  with  strong  influ- 
ence upon  his  mind  and  heart.  He  put  his  old  life  behind 
him,  and  became  an  earnest  Christian.  Some  ladies  in  the 
town  heard  of  this,  visited  him,  and  by  their  encouraging 
words  supported  him  in  his  good  resolutions  and  strength- 
ened him  to  continue  in  his  new  life.  The  trial  ended  in 
his  conviction  and  sentence  to  the  State  prison  for  the  term 
of  nine  years,  as  I  have  before  said.  In  the  prison  he  became 
acquainted  with  the  poor  wretch  referred  to  in  the  beginning 
of  my  talk,  Jack  Hunt,  the  writer  of  the  letter  which  I  am 
going  to  read.  You  will  see  that  the  acquaintanceship  bore 
fruit  for  Hunt.  When  Hunt's  time  was  out,  he  wandered 
to  St.  Louis ;  and  from  that  place  he  wrote  his  letter  to 
Williams.  The  letter  got  no  further  than  the  office  of  the 
prison  warden,  of  course ;  prisoners  are  not  often  allowed  to 
receive  letters  from  outside.  The  prison  authorities  read 
this  letter,  but  did  not  destroy  it.  They  had  not  the  heart 
to  do  it.  They  read  it  to  several  persons,  and  eventually  it 
fell  into  the  hands  of  those  ladies  of  whom  I  spoke  a  while 
ago.  The  other  day  I  came  across  an  old  friend  of  mine  — 
a  clergyman  —  who  had  seen  this  letter,  and  was  full  of  it. 
The  mere  remembrance  of  it  so  moved  him  that  he  could 
not  talk  of  it  without  his  voice  breaking.  He  promised  to 
get  a  copy  of  it  for  me  ;  and  here  it  is,  —  an  exact  copy,  with 
all  the  imperfections  of  the  original  preserved.  It  has  many 
slang  expressions  in  it  —  thieves'  argot — but  their  meaning 
has  been  interlined,  in  parentheses,  by  the  prison  authori- 
ties : "  — 


A  PATHETIC   LETTER. 


511 


Me.  W- 


St.  Louis,  June  9th,  1872. 
friend  Charlie  if  i  may  call  you  so :  i  no  you  are 


surprised  to  get  a  letter  from  me,  but  i  hope  you  won't  be  mad  at 
my  writing  to  you.  i  want  to  tell  you  my  thanks  for  the  way  you 
talked  to  me  when  i  was  in  prison  —  it  has  led  me  to  try  and  be  a 
better  man ;  i  guess  you  thought  i  did  not  cair  for  what  you  said, 
&  at  the  first  go 
off  I  did  n't,  but 
i  noed  you  was  a 
man  who  had  don 
big  work  with 
good  men  &  want 
no  sucker,  nor 
want  gasing  &  all 
the  boys  knod  it. 
I  used  to  think 
at  nite  what  you 
said,  &  for  iti 
nocked  off  swear- 
ing 5  months  be- 
fore my  time  was 
up,  for  i  saw  it 
want  no  good,  no- 
how—  the  day, 
my  time  was  up 
you  told  me  if  i 
would  shake  the 
cross,  (quit  steal- 
ing) &  live  on 
the  square  for  3 
months,  it  would 
be  the  ,  best  job  i 

ever  done  in  my  life.  The  state  agent  give  me  a  ticket  to  here,  & 
on  the  car  i  thought  more  of  what  you  said  to  me,  but  didn't  make 
up  my  mind.  When  we  got  to  Chicago  on  the  cars  from  there  to 
here,  I  pulled  off  an  old  woman's  leather  ;  (robbed  her  of  her  pocket- 
book)  i  had  n't  no  more  than  got  it  off  when  i  wished  i  had  n't  done 
it,  for  awhile  before  that  i  made  up  my  mind  to  be  a  square  bloke, 
for  3  months  on  your  word,  but  forgot  it  when  i  saw  the  leather 


WILLIAMS    PLIES   HIS   TllADE. 


512 


HONEST   CONFESSION. 


was  a  grip  (easy  to  get)  —  but  i  kept  clos  to  her  &  when  she  got  out 
of  the  cars  at  a  way  place  i  said,  inarm  have  you  lost  anything  ?  & 
she  tumbled  (discovered)  her  leather  was  off  (gone)  —  is  this  it  says 


HE   PULLED   SOME       LEATHER. 


i,  giving  it  to. her  —  well  if  you  aint  honest,  says  she,  but  i  hadnt 
got  cheak  enough  to  stand  that  sort  of  talk,  so  i  left  her  in  a  hurry. 
When  i  got  here  i  had  $1  and  25  cents  left  &  i  did  n't  get  no  work 
for  3  days  as  i  aint  strong  enough  for  roust  about  on  a  steam  bote 


HONESTY  PAYS. 


513 


{for  a  deck  hand)  —  The  afternoon  of  the  3rd  day  I  spent  my  last 
10  cts  for  2  moons  {large,  round  sea-biscuit)  &  cheese  &  i  felt  pretty 
rough  &  was  thinking  i  would  have  to  go  on  the  dipe  {picking  pock- 
ets) again,  when  i  thought  of  what  you  once  said  about  a  fellows 
calling  on  the  Lord  when  he  was  in  hard  luck,  &  i  thought  i  would 

try  it  once  anyhow,  but 
when  i  tryed  it  i  got 
stuck  on  the  start,  &  all 
i  could  get  off  wos,  Lord 
give    a    poor    fellow    a 


THE    CRISIS. 


chance  to  square  it  for  3  months  for  Christ's  sake,  amen ;  &  i  kept  a 
thinking,  of  it  over  and  over  as  i  went  along  —  about  an  hour  after 
that  i  was  in  4th  St.  &  this  is  what  happened  &  is  the  cause  of  my 
being  where  i  am  now  &  about  which  i  will  tell  you  before  i  get 
done  writing.  As  i  was  walking  along  i  herd  a  big  noise  &  saw 
a  horse  running  away  with  a  carriage  with  2  children  in  it,  &  I 
grabed  up  a  peace  of  box  cover  from  the  side  walk  &  run  in. 
the  middle  of  the  street,  &  when  the  horse  came  up  i  smashed  him 

33 


514  A  NEW  LIFE. 

over  the  head  as  hard  as  i  could  drive  —  the  bord  split  to  peces  & 
the  horse  checked  up  a  little  &  i  grabbed  the  reigns  &  pulled  his 
head  down  until  he  stopped  —  the  gentleman  what  owned  him  came 
running  Up  &  soon  as  he  saw  the  children  were  all  rite,  he  shook 
hands  with  me  &  gave  me  a  $50  green  back,  &  my  asking  the  Lord 
to  help  me  come  into  my  head,  &  i  was  so  thunderstruck  i  could  n't 
drop  the  reigns  nor  say  nothing  —  he  saw  something  was  up,  & 
coming  back  to  me  said,  my  boy  are  you  hurt  ?  &  the  thought  come 
into  my  head  just  then  to  ask  him  for  work  ;  &  i  asked  him  to  take 
back  the  bill  and  give  me  a  job  —  says  he,  jump  in  here  &  lets 
talk  about  it,  but  keep  the  money  —  he  asked  me  if  i  could  take 
care  of  horses  &  i  said  yes,  for  i  used  to  hang  round  livery  stables 
&  often  would  help  clean  &  drive  horses,  he  told  me  he  wanted 
a  man  for  that  work,  &  would  give  me  $16.  a  month  &  bord  me. 
You  bet  i  took  that  chance  at  once,  that  nite  in  my  little  room  over 
the  stable  i  sat  a  long  time  thinking  over  my  past  life  &  of  what 
had  just  happened  &  i  just  got  down  on  my  nees  &  thanked  the 
Lord  for  the  job  &  to  help  me  to  square  it,  &  to  bless  you  for  put- 
ting me  up  to  it,  &  the  next  morning  i  done  it  again  &  got  me  some 
new  togs  (clothes)  &  a  bible  for  i  made  up  my  mind  after  what  the 
Lord  had  done  for  me  i  would  read  the  bible  every  nite  and  morn- 
ing, &  ask  him  to  keep  an  eye  on  me.  When  I  had  been  there 
about  a  week  Mr  Brown  (that 's  his  name)  came  in  my  room  one 
nite  &  saw  me  reading  the  bible  —  he  asked  me  if  i  was  a  Christian 
&  i  told  him  no  —  he  asked  me  how  it  was  i  read  the  bible  instead 
of  papers  &  books  —  Well  Charlie  i  thought  i  had  better  give  him 
a  square  deal  in  the  start,  so  i  told  him  all  about  my  being  in  prison 
&  about  you,  &  how  i  had  almost  done  give  up  looking  for  work  & 
how  the  Lord  got  me  the  job  when  i  asked  him ;  &  the  only  way  i 
had  to  pay  him  back  was  to  read  the  bible  &  square  it,  &  i  asked 
him  to  give  me  a  chance  for  3  months  —  he  talked  to  me  like  a 
father  for  a  long  time,  &  told  me  i  could  stay  &  then  i  felt  better 
than  ever  i  had  done  in  my  life,  for  i  had  given  Mr.  Brown  a  fair 
start  with  me  &  now  i  did  n't  fear  no  one  giving  me  a  back  cap 
(exposing  his  past  life)  &  running  me  off  the  job  —  the  next  morn- 
ing he  called  me  into  the  library  &  gave  me  another  square  talk, 
&  advised  me  to  study  some  every  day,  &  he  would  help  me  one  or 
2  hours  every  nite,  &  he  gave  me  a  Arithmetic,  a  spelling  book,  a 
Geography  &  a  writing  book,  &  he  hers  me  every  nite  —  he  lets 


REFORMED  AND   CONVERTED.  515 

me  come  into  the  house  to  prayers  every  morning,  &  got  me  put  in 
a  bible  class  in  the  Sunday  School  which  i  likes  very  much  for  it 
helps  me  to  understand  my  bible  better. 

Now,  Charlie  the  8  months  on  the  square  are  up  2  months  ago, 
&  as  you  said,  it  is  the  best  job  i  ever  did  in  my  life,  &  i  commenced 
another  of  the  same  sort  right  away,  only  it  is  to  God  helping  me 
to  last  a  lifetime  Charlie  —  i  wrote  this  letter  to  tell  you  I  do  think 
God  has  forgiven  my  sins  &  herd  your  prayers,  for  you  told  me  you 
should  pray  for  me  —  i  no  i  love  to  read  his  word  &  tell  him  all  my 
troubles  &  he  helps  me  i  know  for  i  have  plenty  of  chances  to  steal 
but  i  don't  feel  to  as  i  once  did  &  now  i  take  more  pleasure  in  going 
to  church  than  to  the  theatre  &  that  wasnt  so  once  —  our  minister 
and  others  often  talk  with  me  &  a  month  ago  they  wanted  me  to 
join  the  church,  but  I  said  no,  not  now,  i  may  be  mistaken  in  my 
feelings,  i  will  wait  awhile,  but  now  i  feel  that  God  has  called  me  & 
on  the  first  Sunday  in  July  i  will  join  the  church  —  dear  friend  i 
wish  i  could  write  to  you  as  i  feel,  but  i  cant  do  it  yet  —  you  no  i 
learned  to  read  and  write  while  in  prisons  &  i  aint  got  well  enough 
along  to  write  as  i  would  talk ;  i  no  i  aint  spelled  all  the  words  rite 
in  this  &  lots  of  other  mistakes  but  you  will  excuse  it  i  no,  for  you 
no  i  was  brought  up  in  a  poor  house  until  i  run  away,  &  that  i 
never  new  who  my  father  and  mother  was  &  i  dont  no  my  rite  name, 
&  i  hope  you  wont  be  mad  at  me,  but  i  have  as  much  rite  to  one 
name  as  another  &  i  have  taken  your  name,  for  you  wont  use  it 
when  you  get  out  i  no,  &  you  are  the  man  i  think  most  of  in  the 
world ;  so  i  hope  you  wont  be  mad  —  I  am  doing  well,  i  put  $10  a 
month  in  bank  with  $25  of  the  $50  —  if  you  ever  want  any  or  all 
of  it  let  me  know,  &  it  is  yours,  i  wish  you  would  let  me  send  you 
some  now.  I  send  you  with  this  a  receipt  for  a  year  of  Littles 
Living  Age,  i  did  n't  know  what  you  would  like  &  i  told  Mr  Brown 
&  he  said  he  thought  you  would  like  it  —  i  wish  i  was  nere  you  so 
i  could  send  you  chuck  (refreshments)  on  holidays ;  it  would  spoil 
this  weather  from  here,  but  i  will  send  you  a  box  next  thanksgiving 
any  way  —  next  week  Mr  Brown  takes  me  into  his  store  as  lite 
porter  &  will  advance  me  as  soon  as  i  know  a  little  more  —  he 
keeps  a  big  granary  store,  wholesale  —  i  forgot  to  tell  you  of  my 
mission  school,  Sunday  school  class  —  the  school  is  in  the  Sunday 
afternoon,  i  went  out  two  Sunday  afternoons,  and  picked  up  seven 
kids  (little  boys)  &  got  them  to  come  in.     two  of  them  new  as  much 


516 


THE   ELOQUENCE   OF   TKUTH. 


as  i  did  &  i  had  them  put  in  a  class  where  they  could  learn  some- 
thing, i  dont  no  much  myself,  but  as  these  kids  cant  read  i  get  on 
nicely  with  them,  i  make  sure  of  them  by  going  after  them  every 
Sunday  |  hour  before  school  time,  i  also  got  4  girls  to  come,  tell 
Mack  and  Harry  about  me,  if  they  will  come  out  here  when  their 
time  is  up  i  will  get  them  jobs  at  once,     i  hope  you  will  excuse  this 


MISSION   WORK. 


long  letter  &  all  mistakes,  i  wish  i  could  see  you  for  i  cant  write  as 
i  would  talk  —  i  hope  the  warm  weather  is  doing  your  lungs  good 
—  i  was  afraid  when  you  was  bleeding  you  would  die  —  give  my 
respects  to  all  the  boys  and  tell  them  how  i  am  doing  —  i  am  doing 
well  and  every  one  here  treats  me  as  kind  as  they  can  —  Mr  Brown 
is  going  to  write  to  you  sometime  —  i  hope  some  day  you  will 
write  to  me,  this  letter  is  from  your  very  true  friend 

C w 

who  you  know  as  Jack  Hunt. 
I  send  you  Mr  Brown's  card.     Send  my  letter  to  him. 

Here  was  true  eloquence  ;  irresistible  eloquence  ;  and  with- 
out a  single  grace  or  ornament  to  help  it  out.     I  have  seldom 


PHILANTHROPISTS   ENLISTED.  517 

been  so  deeply  stirred  by  any  piece  of  writing.  The  reader 
of  it  halted,  all  the  way  through,  on  a  lame-and  broken  voice  ; 
yet  he  had  tried  to  fortify  his  feelings  by  several  private 
readings  of  the  letter  before  venturing  into  company  with  it. 
He  was  practising  upon  me  to  see  if  there  was  any  hope  of  his 
being  able  to  read  the  document  to  his  prayer-meeting  witli 
anything  like  a  decent  command  over  his  feelings.  The 
result  was  not  promising.  However,  he  determined  to  risk 
it ;  and  did.  He  got  through  tolerably  well ;  but  his  audience 
broke  down  early,  and  stayed  in  that  condition  to  the  end. 

The  fame  of  the  letter  spread  through  the  town.  A  brother 
minister  came  and  borrowed  the  manuscript,  put  it  bodily  into 
a  sermon,  preached  the  sermon  to  twelve  hundred  people  on 
a  Sunday  morning,  and  the  letter  drowned  them  in  their  own 
tears.  Then  my  friend  put  it  into  a  sermon  and  went  before 
his  Sunday  morning  congregation  with  it.  It  scored  another 
triumph.     The  house  wept  as  one  individual. 

My  friend  went  on  summer  vacation  up  into  the  fishing 
regions  of  our  northern  British  neighbors,  and  carried  this 
sermon  with  him,  since  he  might  possibly  chance  to  need  a 
sermon.  He  was  asked  to  preach,  one  day.  The  little  church 
was  full.  Among  the  people  present  were  the  late  Dr.  J.  G. 
Holland,  the  late  Mr.  Seymour  of  the  "New  York  Times," 
Mr.  Page,  the  philanthropist  and  temperance  advocate,  and,  I 
think,  Senator  Frye,  of  Maine.  The  marvellous  letter  did  its 
wonted  work ;  all  the  people  were  moved,  all  the  people  wept ; 
the  tears  flowed  in  a  steady  stream  down  Dr.  Holland's 
cheeks,  and  nearly  the  same  can  be  said  with  regard  to  all 
who  were  there.  Mr.  Page  was  so  full  of  enthusiasm  over 
the  letter  that  he  said  he  would  not  rest  until  he  made  pil- 
grimage to  that  prison,  and  had  speech  with  the  man  who  had 
been  able  to  inspire  a  fellow-unfortunate  to  write  so  priceless 
a  tract. 

Ah,  that  unlucky  Page  !  —  and  another  man.  H  they  had 
only  been  in  Jericho,  that  letter  would  have  rung  through 
the  world  and  stirred  all  the  hearts  of  all  the  nations  for  a 


518  A  SCEPTICAL  QUESTION. 

thousand  years  to  come,  and  nobody  might  ever  have  found 
out  that  it  was  the  confoundedest,  brazenest,  ingeniousest 
piece  of  fraud  and  humbuggery  that  was  ever  concocted  to 
fool  poor  confiding  mortals  with ! 

The  letter  was  a  pure  swindle,  and  that  is  the  truth.  And 
take  it  by  and  large,  it  was  without  a  compeer  among  swin- 
dles. It  was  perfect,  it  was  rounded,  symmetrical,  complete, 
colossal ! 

The  reader  learns  it  at  this  point ;  but  we  did  n't  learn  it 
till  some  miles  and  weeks  beyond  this  stage  of  the  affair. 
My  friend  came  back  from  the  woods,  and  he  and  other 
clergymen  and  lay  missionaries  began  once  more  to  inundate 
audiences  with  their  tears  and  the  tears  of  said  audiences ;  I 
begged  hard  for  permission  to  print  the  letter  in  a  magazine 
and  tell  the  watery  story  of  its  triumphs ;  numbers  of  people 
got  copies  of  the  letter,  with  permission  to  circulate  them  in 
writing,  but  not  in  print ;  copies  were  sent  to  the  Sandwich 
Islands  and  other  far  regions. 

Charles  Dudley  Warner  was  at  church,  one  day,  when  the 
worn  letter  was  read  and  wept  over.  At  the  church  door, 
afterward,  he  dropped  a  peculiarly  cold  iceberg  down  the 
clergyman's  back  with  the  question, — 

"Do  you  know  that  letter  to  be  genuine  ? " 

It  was  the  first  suspicion  that  had  ever  been  voiced ;  but 
it  had  that  sickening  effect  which  first-uttered  suspicions 
against  one's  idol  always  have.    Some  talk  followed  :  — 

"  Why  —  what  should  make  you  suspect  that  it  is  n't 
genuine  ?  " 

"  Nothing  that  I  know  of,  except  that  it  is  too  neat,  and 
compact,  and  fluent,  and  nicely  put  together  for  an  ignorant 
person,  an  unpractised  hand.  I  think  it  was  done  by  an 
educated  man." 

The  literary  artist  had  detected  the  literary  machinery.  If 
you  will  look  at  the  letter  now,  you  will  detect  it  yourself  — 
it  is  observable  in  every  line. 

Straightway  the   clergyman  went  off,  with  this  seed  of 


THE  LETTER  GUARANTEED. 


519 


suspicion  sprouting  in  him,  and  wrote  to  a  minister  resid- 
ing in  that  town  where  Williams  had  been  jailed  and 
converted ;  asked  for  light ;  and  also  asked  if  a  person 
in  the  literary  line  (meaning  me)  might  be  allowed  to  print 
the  letter  and  tell  its  history.  He  presently  received  this 
answer  :  — 

Rev. . 

My  Dear  Friend,  — In  regard  to  that  "  convict's  letter  "  there 
can  be  no  doubt  as  to  its  genuineness.  "Williams,"  to  whom  it 
was  written,  lay 
in  our  jail  and 
professed  to  have 
been     converted, 

and  Rev.  Mr. , 

the  chaplain,  had 
great  faith  in  the 
genuineness  of  the 
change  —  as  much 
as  one  can  have  in 
any  such  case. 

The  letter  was 
sent  to  one  of  our 
ladies,  who  is  a 
Sunday-school 
teacher,  — >sent 
either  by  Wil- 
liams himself,  or 
the  chaplain  of 
the  State's  prison,  Williams. 

probably.      She 

has  been  greatly  annoyed  in  having  so  much  publicity,  lest  it 
might  seem  a  breach  of  confidence,  or  be  an  injury  to  Wil- 
liams. In  regard  to  its  publication,  I  can  give  no  permission ; 
though  if  the  names  and  places  were  omitted,  and  especially  if 
sent  out  of  the  country,  I  think  you  might  take  the  responsibility 
and  do  it. 

It  is  a  wonderful  letter,  which  no  Christian  genius,  much  less  one 
unsanctified,  could  ever  have  written.      As  showing  the  work  of 


520  THE   SCEPTIC   CONDEMNED. 

grace  in  a  human  heart,  and  in  a  very  degraded  and  wicked  one,  it 
proves  its  own  origin  and  reproves  our  weak  faith  in  its  power  to 
cope  with  any  form  of  wickedness. 

"  Mr.  Brown "  of  St.  Louis,  some  one  said,  was  a  Hartford 
man.  Do  all  whom  you  send  from  Hartford  serve  their  Master  as 
well? 

P.  S.  Williams  is  still  in  the  State's  prison,  serving  out  a  long 
sentence  —  of  nine  years,  I  think.  He  has  been  sick  and  threatened 
with  consumption,  but  I  have  not  inquired  after  him  lately.  This 
lady  that  I  speak  of  corresponds  with  him,  I  presume,  and  will  be 
quite  sure  to  look  after  him. 

This  letter  arrived  a  few  days  after  it  was  written  —  and 
up  went  Mr.  Williams's  stock  again.  Mr.  Warner's  low- 
down  suspicion  was  laid  in  the  cold,  cold  grave,  where  it 
apparently  belonged.  It  was  a  suspicion  based  upon  mere 
internal  evidence,  anyway ;  and  when  you  come  to  internal 
evidence,  it 's  a  big  field  and  a  game  that  two  can  play  at : 
as  witness  this  other  internal  evidence,  discovered  by  the 
writer  of  the  note  above  quoted,  that  "  it  is  a  wonderful 
letter  —  which  no  Christian  genius,  much  less  one  unsanc- 
tified,  could  ever  have  written." 

I  had  permission  now  to  print — provided  I  suppressed 
names  and  places  and  sent  my  narrative  out  of  the  country. 
So  I  chose  an  Australian  magazine  for  vehicle,  as  being  far 
enough  out  of  the  country,  and  set  myself  to  work  on  my 
article.  And  the  ministers  set  the  pumps  going  again,  with 
the  letter  to  work  the  handles. 

But  meantime  Brother  Page  had  been  agitating.  He  had 
not  visited  the  penitentiary,  but  he  had  sent  a  copy  of  the 
illustrious  letter  to  the  chaplain  of  that  institution,  and 
accompanied  it  with  —  apparently  —  inquiries.  He  got  an 
answer,  dated  four  days  later  than  that  other  Brother's 
reassuring  epistle ;  and  before  my  article  was  complete,  it 
wandered  into  my  hands.  The  original  is  before  me,  now, 
and  I  here  append  it.  It  is  pretty  well  loaded  with  internal 
evidence  of  the  most  solid  description  :  — 


THE   SWINDLE   EXPOSED.  521 

State's  Prison,  Chaplain's  Office,  July  11,  1873. 
Dear  Bro.  Page,  —  Herewith  please  find  the  letter  kindly 
loaned  me.  I  am  afraid  its  genuineness  cannot  be  established.  It 
purports  to  be  addressed  to  some  prisoner  here.  No  such  letter 
ever  came  to  a  prisoner  here.  All  letters  received  are  carefully- 
read  by  officers  of  the  prison  before  they  go  into  the  hands  of  the 
convicts,  and  any  such  letter  could  not  be  forgotten.  Again,  Charles 
Williams  is  not  a  Christian  man,  but  a  dissolute,  cunning  prodigal, 
whose  father  is  a  minister  of  the  gospel.  His  name  is  an  assumed 
one.  I  am  glad  to  have  made  your  acquaintance.  I  am  preparing 
a  lecture  upon  life  seen  through  prison  bars,  and  should  like  to 
deliver  the  same  in  your  vicinity. 

And  so  ended  that  little  drama.  My  poor  article  went 
into  the  fire  ;  for  whereas  the  materials  for  it  were  now 
more  abundant  and  infinitely  richer  than  they  had  previ- 
ously been,  there  were  parties  all  around  me,  who,  although 
longing  for  the  publication  before,  were  a  unit  for  suppres- 
sion at  this  stage  and  complexion  of  the  game.  They  said, 
—  "  Wait  —  the  wound  is  too  fresh,  yet."  All  the  copies  of 
the  famous  letter  except  mine,  disappeared  suddenly ;  and 
from  that  time  onward,  the  aforetime  same  old  drought  set 
in  in  the  churches.  As  a  rule,  the  town  was  on  a  spacious 
grin  for  a  while,  but  there  were  places  in  it  where  the  grin 
did  not  appear,  and  where  it  was  dangerous  to  refer  to  the 
ex-convict's  letter. 

A  word  of  explanation.  "Jack  Hunt,"  the  professed 
writer  of  the  letter,  was  an  imaginary  person.  The  burglar 
Williams — Harvard  graduate,  son  of  a  minister  —  wrote  the 
letter  himself,  to  himself :  got  it  smuggled  out  of  the  prison ; 
got  it  conveyed  to  persons  who  had  supported  and  encouraged 
him  in  his  conversion  —  where  he  knew  two  things  would 
happen  :  the  genuineness  of  the  letter  would  not  be  doubted 
or  inquired  into  ;  and  the  nub  of  it  would  be  noticed,  and 
would  have  valuable  effect  —  the  effect,  indeed,  of  starting 
a  movement  to  get  Mr.  Williams  pardoned  out  of  prison. 

That  "  nub  "  is  so  ingeniously,  so  casually,  flung  in,  and 


522  A  GIFTED  RASCAL. 

immediately  left  there  in  the  tail  of  the  letter,  undwelt  upon, 
that  an  indifferent  reader  would  never  suspect  that  it  was 
the  heart  and  core  of  the  epistle,  if  he  even  took  note  of  it 
at  all.     This  is  the  "  nub  "  :  — 

"  i  hope  the  warm  weather  is  doing  your  lungs  good  —  i  was 
afraid  when  you  was  bleeding  you  would  die  —  give  my  respects," 
etc. 

That  is  all  there  is  of  it  —  simply  touch  and  go  —  no 
dwelling  upon  it.  Nevertheless  it  was  intended  for  an  eye 
that  would  be  swift  to  see  it ;  and  it  was  meant  to  move  a 
kind  heart  to  try  to  effect  the  liberation  of  a  poor  reformed 
and  purified  fellow  lying  in  the  fell  grip  of  consumption. 

When  I  for  the  first  time  heard  that  letter  read,  nine 
years  ago,  I  felt  that  it  was  the  most  remarkable  one  I  had 
ever  encountered.  And  it  so  warmed  me  toward  Mr.  Brown 
of  St.  Louis  that  I  said  that  if  ever  I  visited  that  city  again, 
I  would  seek  out  that  excellent  man  and  kiss  the  hem  of 
his  garment  if  it  was  a  new  one.  Well,  I  visited  St.  Louis, 
but  I  did  not  hunt  for  Mr.  Brown ;  for,  alas  !  the  investiga- 
tions of  long  ago  had  proved  that  the  benevolent  Brown, 
like  "  Jack  Hunt,"  was  not  a  real  person,  but  a  sheer  inven- 
tion of  that  gifted  rascal,  Williams — burglar,  Harvard  grad- 
uate, son  of  a  clergyman. 


CHAPTER  LIII. 

MY  BOYHOOD'S  HOME. 

WE  took  passage  in  one  of  the  fast  boats  of  the  St. 
Louis  and  St.  Paul  Packet  Company,  and  started 
up  the  river. 

When  I,  as  a  boy,  first  saw  the  mouth  of  the  Missouri 
River,  it  was  twenty-two  or  twenty-three  miles  above  St. 
Louis,  according  to  the  estimate  of  pilots ;  the  wear  and 
tear  of  the  banks  has  moved  it  down  eight  miles  since  then ; 
and  the  pilots  say  that  within  five  years  the  river  will  cut 
through  and  move  the  mouth  down  five  miles  more,  which 
will  bring  it  within  ten  miles  of  St.  Louis. 

About  nightfall  we  passed  the  large  and  flourishing  town 
of  Alton,  Illinois  ;  and  before  daylight  next  morning  the 
town  of  Louisiana,  Missouri,  a  sleepy  village  in  my  day,  but 
a  brisk  railway  centre  now  ;  however,  all  the  towns  out 
there  are  railway  centres  now.  I  could  not  clearly  recog- 
nize the  place.  This  seemed  odd  to  me,  for  when  I  retired 
from  the  rebel  army  in  '61  I  retired  upon  Louisiana  in  good 
order;  at  least  in  good  enough  order  for  a  person  who  had 
not  yet  learned  how  to  retreat  according  to  the  rules  of  war, 
and  had  to  trust  to  native  genius.  It  seemed  to  me  that  for 
a  first  attempt  at  a  retreat  it  was  not  badly  done.  I  had 
done  no  advancing  in  all  that  campaign  that  was  at  all  equal 
to  it. 

There  was  a  railway  bridge  across  the  river  here  well 
sprinkled  with  glowing  lights,  and  a  very  beautiful  sight  it 
was. 


524  SUNDAY  AT   HANNIBAL. 

At  seven  in  the  morning  we  reached  Hannibal,  Missouri, 
where  my  boyhood  was  spent.  I  had  had  a  glimpse  of  it 
fifteen  years  ago,  and  another  glimpse  six  years  earlier,  but 
both  were  so  brief  that  they  hardly  counted.  The  only  no- 
tion of  the  town  that  remained  in  my  mind  was  the  memory 
of  it  as  I  had  known  it  when  I  first  quitted  it  twenty-nine 
years  ago.  That  picture  of  it  was  still  as  clear  and  vivid  to 
me  as  a  photograph.  I  stepped  ashore  with  the  feeling  of 
one  who  returns  out  of  a  dead-and-gone  generation.  I  had 
a  sort  of  realizing  sense  of  what  the  Bastille  prisoners  must 
have  felt  when  they  used  to  come  out  and  look  upon  Paris 
after  years  of  captivity,  and  note  how  curiously  the  famil- 
iar and  the  strange  were  mixed  together  before  them.  I 
saw  the  new  houses  —  saw  them  plainly  enough  —  but  they 
did  not  affect  the  older  picture  in  my  mind,  for  through 
their  solid  bricks  and  mortar  I  saw  the  vanished  houses, 
which  had  formerly  stood  there,  with  perfect  distinctness. 

It  was  Sunday  morning,  and  everybody  was  abed  yet.  So 
I  passed  through  the  vacant  streets,  still  seeing  the  town  as 
it  was,  and  not  as  it  is,  and  recognizing  and  metaphorically 
shaking  hands  with  a  hundred  familiar  objects  which  no 
longer  exist;  and  finally  climbed  Holiday's  Hill  to  get  a 
comprehensive  view.  The  whole  town  lay  spread  out  below 
me  then,  and  I  could  mark  and  fix  every  locality,  every 
detail.  Naturally,  I  was  a  good  deal  moved.  I  said,  "  Many 
of  the  people  I  once  knew  in  this  tranquil  refuge  of  my 
childhood  are  now  in  heaven ;  some,  I  trust,  are  in  the  other 
place." 

The  things  about  me  and  before  me  made  me  feel  like  a 
boy  again  —  convinced  me  that  I  was  a  boy  again,  and  that 
I  had  simply  been  dreaming  an  unusually  long  dream ;  but 
my  reflections  spoiled  all  that ;  for  they  forced  me  to  say, 
"  I  see  fifty  old  houses  down  yonder,  into  each  of  which  I 
could  enter  and  find  either  a  man  or  a  woman  who  was  a 
baby  or  unborn  when  I  noticed  those  houses  last,  or  a  grand- 
mother who  was  a  plump  young  bride  at  that  time." 


AN   OLD   INHABITANT. 


525 


From  this  vantage  ground  the  extensive  view  up  and  down 
the  river,  and  wide  over  the  wooded  expanses  of  Illinois,  is 
very, beautiful,  —  one  of  the  most  beautiful  on  the  Missis- 
sippi, I  think;  which  is  a  hazardous  remark  to  make,  for  the 
eight  hundred  miles  of  river  between  St.  Louis  and  St.  Paul 
afford  an  unbroken  succession  of  lovely  pictures.  It  may  be 
that  my  affection  for  the  one  in  question  biases  my  judg- 
ment in  its  favor ;  I  cannot  say  as  to  that.  No  matter,  it 
was  satisfyingly 
beautiful  to  me, 
and  it  had  this 
advantage  over 
all  the  other 
friends  whom  I 
was  about  to 
greet  again :  it 
had  suffered  no 
change  ;  it  was  as 
young  and  fresh 
and  comely  and 
gracious  as  ever 
it  had  been; 
whereas, the  faces 
of  the  others 
would  be  old,  and 
scarred  with  the 
campaigns  of  life, 
and  marked  with  their  griefs  and  defeats,  and  would  give 
me  no  upliftings  of  spirit. 

An  old  gentleman,  out  on  an  early  morning  walk,  came 
along,  and  we  discussed  the  weather,  and  then  drifted  into 
other  matters.  I  could  not  remember  his  face.  He  said  he 
had  been  living  here  twenty-eight  years.  So  he  had  come 
after  my  time,  and  I  had  never  seen  him  before.  I  asked 
him  various  questions ;  first  about  a  mate  of  mine  in  Sunday 
school  —  what  became  of  him  ? 


THE    DAYS    OP   LONG   AGO. 


526  BIOGRAPHICAL   SKETCHES. 

"  He  graduated  with  honor  in  an  Eastern  college,  wan- 
dered off  into  the  world  somewhere,  succeeded  at  nothing, 
passed  out  of  knowledge  and  memory  years  ago,  and  is  sup- 
posed to  have  gone  to  the  dogs." 

"  He  was  bright,  and  promised  well  when  he  was  a  boy." 

"  Yes,  but  the  thing  that  happened  is  what  became  of  it 
all." 

I  asked  after  another  lad,  altogether  the  brightest  in  our 
village  school  when  I  was  a  boy. 

"He,  too,  was  graduated  with  honors,  from  an  Eastern 
college ;  but  life  whipped  him  in  every  battle,  straight  along, 
and  he  died  in  one  of  the  Territories,  years  ago,  a  defeated 
man." 

I  asked  after  another  of  the  bright  boys. 

"  He  is  a  success,  always  has  been,  always  will  be,  I 
think." 

I  inquired  after  a  young  fellow  who  came  to  the  town  to 
study  for  one  of  the  professions  when  I  was  a  boy. 

"  He  went  at  something  else  before  he  got  through  — 
went  from  medicine  to  law,  or  from  law  to  medicine  —  then 
to  some  other  new  thing ;  went  away  for  a  year,  came  back 
with  a  young  wife  ;  fell  to  drinking,  then  to  gambling  behind 
the  door ;  finally  took  his  wife  and  two  young  children  to 
her  father's,  and  went  off  to  Mexico ;  went  from  bad  to 
worse,  and  finally  died  there,  without  a  cent  to  buy  a  shroud, 
and  without  a  friend  to  attend  the  funeral." 

"  Pity,  for  he  was  the  best-natured,  and  most  cheery  and 
hopeful  young  fellow  that  ever  was." 

I  named  another  boy. 

"  Oh,  he  is  all  right.  Lives  here  yet ;  has  a  wife  and  chil- 
dren, and  is  prospering." 

Same  verdict  concerning  other  boys. 

I  named  three  school-girls. 

"  The  first  two  live  here,  are  married  and  have  children ; 
the  other  is  long  ago  dead  —  never  married." 

I  named,  with  emotion,  one  of  my  early  sweethearts. 


A  PARADISE  OF  FOOLS.  527 

"  She  is  all  right.  Been  married  three  times  ;  buried  two 
husbands,  divorced  from  the  third,  and  I  hear  she  is  getting 
ready  to  marry  an  old  fellow  out  in  Colorado  somewhere. 
She 's  got  children  scattered  around  here  and  there,  most 
everywheres." 

The  answer  to  several  other  inquiries  was  brief  and 
simple,  — 

"  Killed  in  the  war." 

I  named  another  boy. 

"  Well,  now,  his  case  is  curious !  There  was  n't  a  human 
being  in-this  town  but  knew  that  that  boy  was  a  perfect 
chucklehead ;  perfect  dummy ;  just  a  stupid  ass,  as  you  may 
say.  Everybody  knew  it,  and  everybody  said  it.  Well,  if 
that  very  boy  is  n't  the  first  lawyer  in  the  State  of  Missouri 
to-day,  I  'm  a  Democrat ! " 

"Is  that  so?" 

"  It 's  actually  so.      I  'm  telling  you  the  truth." 

"  How  do  you  account  for  it  ? " 

"  Account  for  it  ?  There  ain't  any  accounting  for  it,  ex- 
cept that  if  you  send  a  damned  fool  to  St.  Louis,  and  you 
don't  tell  them  he 's  a  damned  fool  they  HI  never  find  it  out. 
There 's  one  thing  sure  —  if  I  had  a  damned  fool  I  should 
know  what  to  do  with  him :  ship  him  to  St.  Louis  —  it 's  the 
noblest  market  in  the  world  for  that  kind  of  property.  Well, 
when  you  come  to  look  at  it  all  around,  and  chew  at 
it  and  think  it  over,  don't  it  just  bang  anything  you  ever 
heard  of  ? " 

"  Well,  yes,  it  does  seem  to.  But  don't  you  think  maybe 
it  was  the  Hannibal  people  who  were  mistaken  about  the 
boy,  and  not  the  St.  Louis  people  ? " 

"  Oh,  nonsense  !  The  people  here  have  known  him  from 
the  very  cradle  —  they  knew  him  a  hundred  times  better 
than  the  St.  Louis  idiots  could  have  known  him.  No,  if  you 
have  got  any  damned  fools  that  you  want  to  realize  on,  take 
my  advice  —  send  them  to  St.  Louis." 

I  mentioned  a  great  number  of  people  whom  I  had  formerly 


528 


A  FATAL  JEST. 


known.  Some  were  dead,  some  were  gone  away,  some  had 
prospered,  some  had  come  to  naught;  but  as  regarded  a  dozen 
or  so  of  the  lot,  the  answer  was  comforting : 

"  Prosperous  —  live   here   yet  —  town   littered  with  their 
children." 

I  asked  about  Miss . 

"  Died  in  the  insane  asylum  three  or  four  years  ago  — 
never  was  out  of    it  from  the  time  she  went  in ;  and  was 

always  suffering, 
too ;  never  got  a 
shred  of  her  mind 
back." 

If  he  spoke  the 
truth,  here  was  a 
heavy  tragedy,  in- 
deed. Thirty-six 
years  in  a  mad- 
house, that  some 
young  fools  might 
have  some  fun ! 
I  was  a  small  boy , 
at  the  time  ;  and 
I  saw  those  giddy 
young  ladies 
come  tiptoeing 
into     the      room 

where  Miss 

sat  reading  at 
midnight  by  a  lamp.  The  girl  at  the  head  of  the  file  wore  a 
shroud  and  a  doughface  ;  she  crept  behind  the  victim,  touched 
her  on  the  shoulder,  and  she  looked  up  and  screamed,  and 
then  fell  into  convulsions.  She  did  not  recover  from  the 
fright,  but  went  mad.  In  these  days  it  seems  incredible  that 
people  believed  in  ghosts  so  short  a  time  ago.     But  they  did. 

After  asking  after  such  other  folk  as  I  could  call  to  mind, 
I  finally  inquired  about  myself : 


A   PRACTICAL  JOKE. 


FOLLY  AND   CANDOR. 


529 


"  Oh,  he  succeeded  well  enough  —  another  case  of  damned 
fool.  If  they  'd  sent  him  to  St.  Louis,  he  'd  have  succeeded 
sooner." 

It  was  with  much  satisfaction  that  I  recognized  the  wisdom 
of  having  told  this  candid  gentleman,  in  the  beginning,  that 
my  name  was  Smith. 


"z&K   £&>  ,  r* '  ''X  'wlir^^  fte 


mmc±  *it- 


CHAPTER  LIV. 


PAST  AND  PRESENT. 


BEING  left  to  myself,  up  there,  I  went  on  picking  out  old 
houses  in  the  distant  town,  and  calling  back  their 
former  inmates  out  of  the  mouldy  past.  Among  them  I 
presently  recognized  the  house  of  the  father  of  Lem  Hackett 
(fictitious  name).  It  carried  me  back  more  than  a  genera- 
tion in  a  moment,  and  landed  me  in  the  midst  of  a  time 
when  the  happenings  of  life  were  not  the  natural  and  logical 
results  of  great  general  laws,  but  of  special  orders,  and  were 
freighted  with  very  precise  and  distinct  purposes  —  partly 
punitive  in  intent,  partly  admonitory ;  and  usually  local  in 
application. 

When  I  was  a  small  boy,  Lem  Hackett  was  drowned  —  on 
a  Sunday.  He  fell  out  of  an  empty  flat-boat,  where  he  was 
playing.  Being  loaded  with  sin,  he  went  to  the  bottom  like 
an  anvil.  He  was  the  only  boy  in  the  village  who  slept  that 
night.  We  others  all  lay  awake,  repenting.  We  had  not 
needed  the  information,  delivered  from  the  pulpit  that 
evening,  that  Lem's  was  a  case  of  special  judgment  —  we 
knew  that,  already.  There  was  a  ferocious  thunder-storm, 
that  night,  and  it  raged  continuously  until  near  dawn.  The 
winds  blew,  the  windows  rattled,  the  rain  swept  along  the 
roof  in  pelting  sheets,  and  at  the  briefest  of  intervals 
the  inky  blackness  of  the  night  vanished,  the  houses  over 
the  way  glared  out  white  and  blinding  for  a  quivering  instant, 
then  the  solid  darkness  shut  down  again  and  a  splitting  peal 
of  thunder  followed  which  seemed  to  rend  everything  in  the 
neighborhood  to  shreds  and  splinters.     I  sat  up  in  bed  quak- 


CALLED   TO  REPENTANCE. 


531 


l''f 


ing  and  shuddering,  waiting  for  the  destruction  of  the  world, 
and  expecting  it.  To  me  there  was  nothing  strange  or 
incongruous  in 
heaven's  making- 
such  an  uproar 
about  Lem  Hack- 
ett.  Apparently  it 
was  the  right  and 
proper  thing  to  do. 
Not  a  doubt  en- 
tered my  mind  that 
all  the  angels  were 
grouped  together, 
discussing  this 
boy's  case  and  ob- 
serving the  awful 
bombardment  of 
our  beggarly  little 
village  with  satis- 
faction and  approval.  There  was  one  thing  which  dis- 
turbed me  in  the  most  serious  way ;  that  was  the  thought 
that  this  centering  of  the  celestial  interest  on  our  village 
could  not  fail  to  attract  the  attention  of  the  observers  to 
people  among  us  who  might  otherwise  have  escaped  notice 
for  years.  I  felt  that  I  was  not  only  one  of  those  people, 
but  the  very  one  most  likely  to  be  discovered.  That  discovery 
could  have  but  one  result :  I  should  be  in  the  fire  with  Lem 
before  the  chill  of  the  river  had  been  fairly  warmed  out  of 
him.  I  knew  that  this  would  be  only  just  and  fair.  I  was 
increasing  'the  chances  against  myself  all  the  time,  by  feeling 
a  secret  bitterness  against  Lem  for  having  attracted  this 
fatal  attention  to  me,  but  I  could  not  help  it  —  this  sinful 
thought  persisted  in  infesting  my  breast  in  spite  of  me. 
Every  time  the  lightning  glared  I  caught  my  breath,  and 
judged  I  was  gone.  In  my  terror  and  misery,  I  meanly 
began  to  suggest  other  boys,  and  mention   acts  of  theirs 


"i   SAT   DP   IN   BED   QUAKING." 


532  A  LONG  NIGHT. 

which  were  wickeder  than  mine,  and  peculiarly  needed 
punishment  —  and  I  tried  to  pretend  to  myself  that  I  was 
simply  doing  this  in  a  casual  way,  and  without  intent  to 
divert  the  heavenly  attention  to  them  for  the  purpose  of 
getting  rid  of  it  myself.  With  deep  sagacity  I  put  these 
mentions  into  the  form  of  sorrowing  recollections  and  left- 
handed  sham-supplications  that  the  sins  of  those  boys  might 
be  allowed  to  pass  unnoticed  —  "Possibly  they  may  repent." 
"  It  is  true  that  Jim  Smith  broke  a  window  and  lied  about  it 
—  but  maybe  he  did  not  mean  any  harm.  And  although 
Tom  Holmes  says  more  bad  words  than  any  other  boy  in  the 
village,  he  probably  intends  to  repent  —  though  he  has  never 
said  he  would.  And  whilst  it  is  a  fact  that  John  Jones  did 
fish  a  little  on  Sunday,  once,  he  did  n't  really  catch  anything 
but  only  just  one  small  useless  mud-cat ;  and  maybe  that 
would  n't  have  been  so  awful  if  he  had  thrown  it  back  — as 
he  says  he  did,  but  he  did  n't.  Pity  but  they  would  repent 
of  these  dreadful  things  —  and  maybe  they  will  yet." 

But  while  I  was  shamefully  trying  to  draw  attention  to 
these  poor  chaps  —  who  were  doubtless  directing  the  celestial 
attention  to  me  at  the  same  moment,  though  I  never  once 
suspected  that  —  I  had  heedlessly  left  my  candle  burning. 
It  was  not  a  time  to  neglect  even  trifling  precautions.  There 
was  no  occasion  to  add  anything  to  the  facilities  for  attract- 
ing notice  to  me  —  so  I  put  the  light  out. 

It  was  a  long  night  to  me,  and  perhaps  the  most  distressful 
one  I  ever  spent.  I  endured  agonies  of  remorse  for  sins 
which  I  knew  I  had  committed,  and  for  others  which  I  was 
not  certain  about,  yet  was  sure  that  they  had  been  set  down 
against  me  in  a  book  by  an  angel  who  was  wiser'  than  I  and 
did  not  trust  such  important  matters  to  memory.  It  struck 
me,  by  and  by,  that  I  had  been  making  a  most  foolish  and 
calamitous  mistake,  in  one  respect :  doubtless  I  had  not  only 
made  my  own  destruction  sure  by  directing  attention  to  those 
other  boys,  but  had  already  accomplished  theirs !  —  Doubtless 
the  lightning  had  stretched  them  all  dead  in  their  beds  by 


MORNING  REVIVES  ME.         .  533 

this  time !  The  anguish  and  the  fright  which  this  thought 
gave  me  made  my  previous  sufferings  seem  trilling  by 
comparison. 

Things  had  become  truly  serious.  I  resolved  to  turn  over 
a  new  leaf  instantly ;  I  also  resolved  to  connect  myself  with 
the  church  the  next  day,  if  I  survived  to  see  its  sun  appear. 
I  resolved  to  cease  from  sin  in  all  its  forms,  and  to  lead  a 
high  and  blameless  life  forever  after.  I  would  be  punctual 
at  church  and  Sunday-school ;  visit  the  sick ;  carry  baskets 
of  victuals  to  the  poor  (simply  to  fulfil  the  regulation  con- 
ditions, although  I  knew  we  had  none  among  us  so  poor 
but  they  would  smash  the  basket  over  my  head  for  my 
pains)  ;  I  would  instruct  other  boys  in  right  ways,  and  take 
the  resulting  trouncings  meekly  ;  I  would  subsist  entirely  on 
tracts  ;  I  would  invade  the  rum  shop  and  warn  the  drunkard 
—  and  finally,  if  I  escaped  the  fate  of  those  who  early 
become  too  good  to  live,  I  would  go  for  a  missionary. 

The  storm  subsided  toward  daybreak,  and  I  dozed  gradually 
to  sleep  with  a  sense  of  obligation  to  Lem  Hackett  for  going 
to  eternal  suffering  in  that  abrupt  way,  and  thus  preventing 
a  far  more  dreadful  disaster  —  my  own  loss. 

But  when  I  rose  refreshed,  by  and  by,  and  found  that  those 
other  boys  were  still  alive,  I  had  a  dim  sense  that  perhaps 
the  whole  thing  was  a  false  alarm  ;  that  the  entire  turmoil 
had  been  on  Lem's  account  and  nobody's  else.  The  world 
looked  so  bright  and  safe  that  there  did  not  seem  to  be  any 
real  occasion  to  turn  over  anew  leaf.  I  was  a  little  subdued, 
during  that  day,  and  perhaps  the  next ;  after  that,  my 
purpose  of  reforming  slowly  dropped  out  of  my  mind,  and  I 
had  a  peaceful,  comfortable  time  again,  until  the  next 
storm. 

That  storm  came  about  three  weeks  later ;  and  it  was  the 
most  unaccountable  one,  to  me,  that  I  had  ever  experienced; 
for  on  the  afternoon  of  that  day,  "  Dutchy  "  was  drowned. 
Dutchy  belonged  to  our  Sunday-school.  He  was  a  German 
lad  who  did  not  know  enough  to  come  in  out  of  the  rain ; 


584 


DUTCHY'S   MISHAP. 


but  he  was  exasperatingly  good,  and  had  a  prodigious 
memory.  One  Sunday  he  made  himself  the  envy  of  all  the 
youth  and  the  talk  of  all  the  admiring  village,  by  reciting 
three  thousand  verses  of  Scripture  without  missing  a  word  ; 
then  he  went  off  the  very  next  day  and  got  drowned. 


fALL  ejgiit,    DUTCHY  —  GO  AHEAD. 


Circumstances  gave  to  his  death  a  peculiar  impressiveness. 
We  were  all  bathing  in  a  muddy  creek  which  had  a  deep  hole 
in  it,  and  in  this  hole  the  coopers  had  sunk  a  pile  of  green 
hickory  hoop  poles  to  soak,  some  twelve  feet  under  water. 
We  were  diving  and  "  seeing  who  could  stay  under  longest." 


A  FRIGHTENED   PARTY.       ,  535 

We  managed  to  remain  down  by  holding  on  to  the  hoop  poles. 
Dutchy  made  such  a  poor  success  of  it  that  he  was  hailed 
with  laughter  and  derision  every  time  his  head  appeared 
above  water.  At  last  he  seemed  hurt  with  the  taunts,  and 
begged  us  to  stand  still  on  the  bank  and  be  fair  with  him 
and  give  him  an  honest  count  —  "be  friendly  and  kind  just 
this  once,  and  not  miscount  for  the  sake  of  having  the  fun 
of  laughing  at  him."  Treacherous  winks  were  exchanged, 
and  all  said  "All  right,  Dutchy  —  go  ahead,  we'll  play 
fair." 

Dutchy  plunged  in,  but  the  boys,  instead  of  beginning  to 
count,  followed  the  lead  of  one  of  their  number  and 
scampered  to  a  range  of  blackberry  bushes  close  by  and  hid 
behind  it.  They  imagined  Dutchy's  humiliation,  when  he 
should  rise  after  a  superhuman  effort  and  find  the  place 
silent  and  vacant,  nobody  there  to  applaud.  They  were  "  so 
full  of  laugh "  with  the  idea,  that  they  were  continually 
exploding  into  muffled  cackles.  Time  swept  on,  and  pres- 
ently one  who  was  peeping  through  the  briers,  said,  with 
surprise :  — 

"  Why,  he  hasn't  come  up,  yet !" 

The  laughing  stopped. 

"  Boys,  it 's  a  splendid  dive,"  said  one. 

"  Never  mind  that,"  said  another,  "  the  joke  on  him  is  all 
the  better  for  it." 

There  was  a  remark  or  two  more,  and  then  a  pause. 
Talking  ceased,  and  all  began  to  peer  through  the  vines. 
Before  long,  the  boys'  faces  began  to  look  uneasy,  then 
anxious,  then  terrified.  Still  there  was  no  movement  of  the 
placid  water.  Hearts  began  to  beat  fast,  and  faces  to  turn 
pale.  We  all  glided  out,  silently,  and  stood  on  the  bank,  our 
horrified  eyes  wandering  back  and  forth  from  each  other's 
countenances  to  the  water. 

"  Somebody  must  go  down  and  see  !  " 

Yes,  that  was  plain ;  but  nobody  wanted  that  grisly  task. 

"  Draw  straws  !  " 


536 


CAUGHT   BY   THE    HOOP   POLES. 


So  we  did  —  with  hands  which  shook  so,  that  we  hardly 
knew  what  we  were  about.  The  lot  fell  to  me,  and  I  went 
down.  The  water  was  so  muddy  I  could  not  see  anything, 
but   I   felt   around   among  the   hoop   poles,  and   presently 

grasped  a  limp  wrist 
which  gave  me  no 
response — and  if  it 
had  I  should  not  have 
known  it,  I  let  it  go 
with  such  a  fright- 
ened suddenness. 

The  boy  had  been 
caught  among  the 
hoop  poles  and  en- 
tangled there,  help- 
lessly. I  fled  to  the 
surface  and  told  the 
awful  news.  Some 
of  us  knew  that  if 
the  boy  were  dragged 
out  at  once  he  might 
possibly  be  resusci- 
tated, but  we  never 
thought  of  that.  We  did  not  think  of  anything  ;  we  did 
not  know  what  to  do,  so  we  did  nothing  —  except  that  the 
smaller  lads  cried,  piteously,  and  we  all  struggled  fran- 
tically into  our  clothes,  putting  on  anybody's  that  came 
handy,  and  getting  them  wrong-side-out  and  upside-down,  as 
a  rule.  Then  we  scurried  away  and  gave  the  alarm,  but 
none  of  us  went  back  to  see  the  end  of  the  tragedy.  We  had 
a  more  important  thing  to  attend  to  :  we  all  flew  home,  and 
lost  not  a  moment  in  getting  ready  to  lead  a  better  life. 

The  night  presently  closed  down.  Then  came  on  that  tre- 
mendous and  utterly  unaccountable  storm.  1  was  perfectly 
dazed;  I  could  not  understand  it.  It  seemed  to  me  that 
there  must  be    some  mistake.     The  elements  were   turned 


J),thA 


WE    ALL   FLEW  HOME. 


SUNDAY   VISITING.  537 

loose,  and  they  rattled  and  banged  and  blazed  away  in  the 
most  blind  and  frantic  manner.  All  heart  and  hope  went 
out  of  me,  and  the  dismal  thought  kept  floating  through  my 
brain, "  If  a  boy  who  knows  three  thousand  verses  by  heart 
is  not  satisfactory,  what  chance  is  there  for  anybody  else  ? " 

Of  course  I  never  questioned  for  a  moment  that  the 
storm  was  on  Dutchy's  account,  or  that  he  or  any  other 
inconsequential  animal  was  worthy  of  such  a  majestic 
demonstration  from  on  high ;  the  lesson  of  it  was  the  only 
thing  that  troubled  me ;  for  it  convinced  me  that  if  Dutchy, 
with  all  his  perfections,  was  not  a  delight,  it  would  be  vain 
for  me  to  turn  over  a  new  leaf,  for  I  must  infallibly  fall 
hopelessly  short  of  that  boy,  no  matter  how  hard  I  might 
try.  Nevertheless  I  did  turn  it  over  —  a  highly  educated  fear 
compelled  me  to  do  that  —  but  succeeding  days  of  cheerfulness 
and  sunshine  came  bothering  around,  and  within  a  month  I 
had  so  drifted  backward  that  again  I  was  as  lost  and  com- 
fortable as  ever. 

Breakfast  time  approached  while  I  mused  these  musings 
and  called  these  ancient  happenings  back  to  mind ;  so  I  got 
me  back  into  the  present  and  went  down  the  hill. 

On  my  way  through  town  to  the  hotel,  I  saw  the  house 
which  was  my  home  when  I  was  a  boy.  At  present  rates, 
the  people  who  now  occupy  it  are  of  no  more  value  than  I 
am ;  but  in  my  time  they  would  have  been  worth  not  less 
than  five  hundred  dollars  apiece.     They  are  colored  folk. 

After  breakfast,  I  went  out  alone  again,  intending  to  hunt 
up  some  of  the  Sunday-schools  and  see  how  this  generation 
of  pupils  might  compare  with  their  progenitors  who  had  sat 
with  me  in  those  places  and  had  probably  taken  me  as  a 
model  —  though  I  do  not  remember  as  to  that  now.  By  the 
public  square  there  had  been  in  my  day  a  shabby  little  brick 
church  called  the  "  Old  Ship  of  Zion,"  which  I  had  attended 
as  a  Sunday-school  scholar ;  and  I  found  the  locality  easily 
enough,  but  not  the  old  church  ;  it  was  gone,  and  a  trig  and 
rather  hilarious  new  edifice  was  in  its  place.     The   pupils 


538  ADDRESSING   THE    SCHOOL. 

were  better  dressed  and  better  looking  than  were  those  of  my 
time  ;  consequently  they  did  not  resemble  their  ancestors  ; 
and  consequently  there  was  nothing  familiar  to  me  in  their 
faces.  Still,  I  contemplated  them  with  a  deep  interest  and  a 
yearning  wistfulness,  and  if  I  had  been  a  girl  I  would  have 
cried ;  for  they  were  the  .offspring,  and  represented,  and 
occupied  the  places,  of  boys  and  girls  some  of  whom  I  had 
loved  to  love,  and  some  of  whom  I  had  loved  to  hate,  but 
all  of  whom  were  dear  to  me  for  the  one  reason  or  the  other, 
so  many  years  gone  by  —  and,  Lord,  where  be  they  now! 

I  was  mightily  stirred,  and  would  have  been  grateful  to  be 
allowed  to  remain  unmolested  and  look  my  fill ;  but  a 
bald-summited  superintendent  who  had  been  a  tow-headed 
Sunday-school  mate  of  mine  on  that  spot  in  the  early  ages, 
recognized  me,  and  I  talked  a  flutter  of  wild  nonsense  to 
those  children  to  hide  the  thoughts  which  were  in  me,  and 
which  could  not  have  been  spoken  without  a  betrayal  of  feeling 
that  would  have  been  recognized  as  out  of  character  with 
me. 

Making  speeches  without  preparation  is  no  gift  of  mine; 
and  I  was  resolved  to  shirk  any  new  opportunity,  but  in  the 
next  and  larger  Sunday-school  I  found  myself  in  the  rear  of 
the  assemblage ;  so  I  was  very  willing  to  go  on  the  platform 
a  moment  for  the  sake  of  getting  a  good  look  at  the  scholars. 
On  the  spur  of  the  moment  I  could  not  recall  any  of  the  old 
idiotic  talks  which  visitors  used  to  insult  me  with  when  I 
was  a  pupil  there ;  and  I  was  sorry  for  this,  since  it  would 
have  given  me  time  and  excuse  to  dawdle  there  and  take  a 
long  and  satisfying  look  at  what  I  feel  at  liberty  to  say  was 
an  array  of  fresh  young  comeliness  not  matchable  in  another 
Sunday-school  of  the  same  size.  As  I  talked  merely  to  get 
a  chance  to  inspect ;  and  as  I  strung  out  the  random  rubbish 
solely  to  prolong  the  inspection,  I  judged  it  but  decent  to 
confess  these  low  motives,  and  I  did  so. 

If  the  Model  Boy  was  in  either  of  these  Sunday-schools, 
I  did  not  see  him.     The  Model  Boy  of  my  time  —  we  never 


THE  MODEL  BOY. 


539 


had  but  the  one  —  was  perfect: 
perfect  in  manners,  perfect  in 
dress,  perfect  in  conduct,  perfect  in  filial  piety,  perfect  in 
exterior  godliness ;  but  at  bottom  he  was  a  prig ;  and  as 
for  the  contents  of  his  skull,  they  could  have  changed  place 
with  the  contents  of  a  pie  and  nobody  would  have  been  the 
worse  off  for  it  but  the  pie.  This  fellow's  reproachlessness 
was  a  standing  reproach  to  every  lad  in  the  village.  He  was 
the  admiration  of  all  the  mothers,  and  the  detestation  of  all 
their  sons.  I  was  told  what  became  of  him,  but  as  it  was  a 
disappointment  to  me,  I  will  not  enter  into  details.  He 
succeeded  in  life. 


CHAPTER   LV. 

A   VENDETTA   AND   OTHER  THINGS. 

DURING  my  three  days'  stay  in  the  town,  I  woke  up 
every  morning  with  the  impression  that  I  was  a  boy 
—  for  in  my  dreams  the  faces  were  all  young  again,  and 
looked  as  they  had  looked  in  the  old  times  —  but  I  went  to 
bed  a  hundred  years  old,  every  night  —  for  meantime  I  had 
been  seeing  those  faces  as  they  are  now. 

Of  course  I  suffered  some  surprises,  along  at  first,  before  I 
had  become  adjusted  to  the  changed  state  of  things.  I  met 
young  ladies  who  did  not  seem  to  have  changed  at  all ;  but 
they  turned  out  to  be  the  daughters  of  the  young  ladies  I  had 
in  mind  —  sometimes  their  grand-daughters.  When  you  are 
told  that  a  stranger  of  fifty  is  a  grandmother,  there  is  nothing 
surprising  about  it ;  but  if,  on  the  contrary,  she  is  a  person 
whom  you  knew  as  a  little  girl,  it  seems  impossible.  You 
say  to  yourself,  "  How  can  a  little  girl  be  a  grandmother  ?  " 
It  takes  some  little  time  to  accept  and  realize  the  fact  that 
while  you  have  been  growing  old,  your  friends  have  not  been 
standing  still,  in  that  matter. 

I  noticed  that  the  greatest  changes  observable  were  with 
the  women,  not  the  men.  I  saw  men  whom  thirty  years  had 
changed  but  slightly  ;  but  their  wives  had  grown  old.  These 
were  good  women  ;  it  is  very  wearing  to  be  good. 

There  was  a  saddler  whom  I  wished  to  see ;  but  he  was 
gone.  Dead,  these  many  years,  they  said.  Once  or  twice  a 
day,  the  saddler  used  to  go  tearing  down  the  street,  putting 


A  BLOODTHIRSTY  LIAR.  541 

on  his  coat  as  he  went ;  and  then  everybody  knew  a  steam- 
boat was  coming.  Everybody  knew,  also,  that  John  Stavely 
was  not  expecting  anybody  by  the  boat  —  or  any  freight, 
either ;  and  Stavely  must  have  known  that  everybody  knew 
this,  still  it  made  no  difference  to  him ;  he  liked  to  seem  to 
himself  to  be  expecting  a  hundred  thousand  tons  of  saddles 
by  this  boat,  and  so  he  went  on  all  his  life,  enjoying  being 
faithfully  on  hand  to  receive  and  receipt  for  those  saddles, 
in  case  by  any  miracle  they  should  come.  A  malicious 
Quincy  paper  used  always  to  refer  to  this  town,  in  derision 
as  "  Stavely 's  Landing."  Stavely  was  one  of  my  earliest 
admirations ;  I  envied  him  his  rush  of  imaginary  business, 
and  the  display  he  was  able  to  make  of  it,  before  strangers, 
as  he  went  flying  down  the  street  struggling  with  his 
fluttering  coat. 

But  there  was  a  carpenter  who  was  my  chiefest  hero. 
He  was  a  mighty  liar,  but  I  did  not  know  that ;  I  believed 
everything  he  said.  He  was  a  romantic,  sentimental,  melo- 
dramatic fraud,  and  his  bearing  impressed  me  with  awe.  I 
vividly  remember  the  first  time  lie  took  me  into  his  confidence. 
He  was  planing  a  board,  and  every  now  and  then  he  would 
pause  and  heave  a  deep  sigh  ;  and  occasionally  mutter  broken 
sentences — confused  and  not  intelligible  —  but  out  of  their 
midst  an  ejaculation  sometimes  escaped  which  made  me 
shiver  and  did  me  good  :  one  was,  "  0  God,  it  is  his  blood  !  " 
I  sat  on  the  tool-chest  and  humbly  and  shudderingly  admired 
him  ;  for  I  judged  he  was  full  of  crime.  At  last  he  said  in  a 
low  voice :  — 

"  My  little  friend,  can  you  keep  a  secret  ? " 

I  eagerly  said  I  could. 

"  A  dark  and  dreadful  one  ?  " 

I  satisfied  him  on  that  point. 

"  Then  I  will  tell  you  some  passages  in  my  history  ;  for  oh, 
I  must  relieve  my  burdened  soul,  or  I  shall  die  !  " 

He  cautioned  me  once  more  to  be  "  as  silent  as  the  grave  ; " 
then  he  told  me  he  was  a  "  red-handed  murderer."     He  put 


542  HARROWING   CONFESSION. 

down  his  plane,  held  his  hands  out  before  him,  contemplated 
them  sadly,  and  said  :  — 

"  Look  —  with  these  hands  I  have  taken  the  lives  of  thirty 
human  beings !  '* 

The  effect  which  this  had  upon  me  was  an  inspiration  to 
him,  and  he  turned  himself  loose  upon  his  subject  with  inter- 
est and  energy.  He  left  generalizing,  and  went  into  details, 
—  began  with  his  first  murder ;  described  it,  told  what  meas- 
ures he  had  taken  to  avert  suspicion ;  then  passed  to  his 
second  homicide,  his  third,  his  fourth,  and  so  on.  He  had 
always  done  his  murders  with  a  bowie-knife,  and  he  made 
all  my  hairs  rise  by  suddenly  snatching  it  out  and  showing 
it  to  me. 

At  the  end  of  this  first  seance  I  went  home  with  six  of  his 
fearful  secrets  among  my  freightage,  and  found  them  a  great 
help  to  my  dreams,  which  had  been  sluggish  for  a  while 
back.  I  sought  him  again  and  again,  on  my  Saturday  holi- 
days ;  in  fact  I  spent  the  summer  with  him  —  all  of  it  which 
was  valuable  to  me.  His  fascinations  never  diminished,  for 
he  threw  something  fresh  and  stirring,  in  the  way  of  horror, 
into  each  successive  murder.  He  always  gave  names,  dates, 
places  —  everything.  This  by  and  by  enabled  me  to  note 
two  things:  that  he  had  killed  his  victims  in  every  quarter 
of  the  globe,  and  that  these  victims  were  always  named 
Lynch.  The  destruction  of  the  Lynches  went  serenely  on, 
Saturday  after  Saturday,  until  the  original  thirty  had  multi- 
plied to  sixty,  —  and  more  to  be  heard  from  yet;  then  my 
curiosity  got  the  better  of  my  timidity,  and  I  asked  how  it 
happened  that  these  justly  punished  persons  all  bore  the  same 
name. 

My  hero  said  he  had  never  divulged  that  dark  secret  to  any 
living  being ;  but  felt  that  he  could  trust  me,  and  therefore 
he  would  lay  bare  before  me  the  story  of  his  sad  and  blighted 
life.  He  had  loved  one  "  too  fair  for  earth,"  and  she  had 
reciprocated  "  with  all  the  sweet  affection  of  her  pure  and 
noble  nature."    But  lie  had  a  rival,  a  "base  hireling"  named 


CONSECRATED   REVENGE. 


543 


Archibald  Lynch,  who  said  the  girl  should  be  his,  or  he 
would  "  dye  his  hands  in  her  heart's  best  blood."     The  car- 


penter, "  innocent  and  hap- 
py in  love's  young  dream," 
gave  no  weight  to  t\\e  threat, 
but  led  his  "  golden-haired 
darling  to  the  altar,"  and 
there,  the  two  were  made 
one ;  there  also,  just  as  the 
minister's  hands  were 
stretched  in  blessing  over 
their  heads,  the  fell  deed 
was  done  —  with  a  knife  — 
and  the  bride  fell  a  corpse 
at  her  husband's  feet.  And 
what  did  the  husband  do  ? 
He  plucked  forth  that  knife, 
and  kneeling  by  the  body  of 
his  lost  one,  swore  to  "  con- 
secrate his  life  to  the  extermination  of  all  the  human  scum 
that  bear  the  hated  name  of  Lynch." 


THE    CONSECRATED   KNIFE. 


544  THE   LYNCHES   DOOMED. 

That  was  it.  He  had  been  hunting  down  the  Lynches  and 
slaughtering  them,  from  that  day  to  this  —  twenty  years.  He 
had  always  used  that  same  consecrated  knife  ;  with  it  he  had 
murdered  his  long  array  of  Lynches,  and  with  it  he  had  left 
upon  the  forehead  of  each  victim  a  peculiar  mark  —  a  cross, 
deeply  incised.     Said  he  :  — 

"  The  cross  of  the  Mysterious  Avenger  is  known  in  Europe, 
in  America,  in  China,  in  Siam,  in  the  Tropics,  in  the  Polar 
Seas,  in  the  deserts  of  Asia,  in  all  the  earth.  Wherever  in 
the  uttermost  parts  of  the  globe,  a  Lynch  has  penetrated, 
there  has  the  Mysterious  Cross  been  seen,  and  those  who 
have  seen  it  have  shuddered  and  said,  '  it  is  his  mark,  he 
has  been  here.'  You  have  heard  of  the  Mysterious  Avenger 
—  look  upon  him,  for  before  you  stands  no  less  a  person ! 
'But  beware  —  breathe  not  a  word  to  any  soul.  Be  silent, 
and  wait.  Some  morning  this  town  will  flock  aghast  to  view 
a  gory  corpse  ;  on  its  brow  will  be  seen  the  awful  sign,  and 
men  will  tremble  and  whisper,  '  he  has  been  here,  —  it  is  the 
Mysterious  Avenger's  mark ! '  You  will  come  here,  but  I 
shall  have  vanished;  you  will  see  me  no  more." 

This  ass  has  been  reading  the  "  Jibbenainosay,"  no  doubt, 
and  had  had  his  poor  romantic  head  turned  by  it ;  but  as  I  had 
not  yet  seen  the  book  then,  I  took  his  inventions  for  truth, 
and  did  not  suspect  that  he  was  a  plagiarist. 

However,  we  had  a  Lynch  living  in  the  town ;  and  the 
more  I  reflected  upon  his  impending  doom,  the  more  I  could 
not  sleep.  It  seemed  my  plain  duty  to  save  him,  and  a  still 
plainer  and  more  important  duty  to  get  some  sleep  for  my- 
self, so  at  last  I  ventured  to  go  to  Mr.  Lynch  and  tell  him 
what  was  about  to  happen  to  him  —  under  strict  secrecy.  I 
advised  him  to  "  fly,"  and  certainly  expected  him  to  do  it. 
But  he  laughed  at  me ;  and  he  did  not  stop  there ;  he  led  me 
down  to  the  carpenter's  shop,  gave  the  carpenter  a  jeering 
and  scornful  lecture  upon  his  silly  pretensions,  slapped  his 
face,  made  him  get  down  on  his  knees  and  beg  —  then  went 
off  and  left  me  to  contemplate  the  cheap  and  pitiful  ruin  of 


A  BLASTED   VOLCANO. 


545 


what,  in  my  eyes,  had  so  lately  been  a  majestic  and  incom- 
parable hero.     The  carpenter  blustered,  nourished  his  knife, 

and  doomed  this  Lynch  in  his 
usual  volcanic  style,  the  size  of 
his  fateful  words  undiminished  ; 


^» 


A   CHEAP   AND    PITIFUL   RUIN. 


but  it  was  all  wasted 
upon  me ;  he  was  a 
hero  to  me  no  longer 
but  only  a  poor,  fool- 
ish, exposed  humbug. 
I  was  ashamed  of  him, 
and  ashamed  of  my- 
self ;  I  took  no  fur- 
ther interest  in  him, 
and  never  went  to  his 
shop  any  more.     He 

was  a  heavy  loss  to  me,  for  he  was  the  greatest  hero  I  had 
ever  known.  The  fellow  must  have  had  some  talent ;  for 
some  of  his  imaginary  murders  were  so  vividly  and  dramat- 
ically described  that  I  remember  all  their  details  yet. 

The  people  of  Hannibal  are  not  more  changed  than  is  the 
town.  It  is  no  longer  a  village  ;  it  is  a  city,  with  a  mayor, 
and  a  council,  and  water-works,  and  probably  a  debt.  It  has 
fifteen  thousand  people,  is  a  thriving  and  energetic  place, 
and  is  paved  like  the  rest  of  the  west  and  south  —  where  a 
well-paved  street  and  a  good  sidewalk  are  things  so  seldom 

35 


546 


BARE   OF  BEARS. 


seen,  that  one  doubts  them  when  he  does  see  them.  The 
customary  half-dozen  railways  centre  in  Hannibal  now,  and 
there  is  a  new  depot  which  cost  a  hundred  thousand  dollars. 
In  my  time  the  town  had  no  specialty,  and  no  commercial 
grandeur ;  the  daily  packet  usually  landed  a  passenger  and 
bought  a  catfish,  and  took  away  another  passenger  and  a 
hatful  of  freight ;  but  now  a  huge  commerce  in  lumber  has 
grown  up  and  a  large  miscellaneous  commerce  is  one  of  the 
results.     A  deal  of  money  changes  hands  there  now. 

Bear  Creek  —  so  called,  perhaps,  because  it  was  always  so 
particularly  bare  of    bears  —  is  hidden  out  of    sight  now, 
under    islands    and 
continents   of    piled 


A   BAD   CASE    OF   SHAKES. 


lumber,  and 

nobody   but 

an  expert 

can  find  it.    I  used 

to  get  drowned  in 

it     every     summer 

regularly,    and    be 

drained   out,   and   inflated   and   set   going   again   by    some 

chance  enemy ;  but  not  enough  of  it  is  unoccupied  now  to 

drown  a  person  in.     It  was  a  famous  breeder  of  chills  and 

fever  in  its  clay.     I  remember  one  summer  when  everybody 

in  town  had  this  disease  at  once.     Many  chimneys  were 


SACRILEGIOUS    TOURISTS. 


547 


shaken  down,  and  all  the  houses  were  so  racked  that  the 
town  had  to  be  rebuilt.  The  chasm  or  gorge  between 
Lover's  Leap  and  the  hill  west  of  it  is  supposed  by  scien- 
tists to  have  been  caused  by  glacial  action.  This  is  a 
mistake. 

There  is  an  interesting  cave  a  mile  or  two  below  Hanni- 
bal, among  the  bluffs.  I  would  have  liked  to  revisit  it, 
but  had  not  time.  In  my  time  the  person  who  then  owned 
it  turned  it  into  a  mausoleum  for  his  daughter,  aged  four- 
teen. The  body  of  this  poor  child  was  put  into  a  copper 
cylinder  filled  with  alcohol,  and  this  was  suspended  in  one 
of  the  dismal  avenues  of  the  cave.  The  top  of  the  cylinder 
was  removable  ;  and  it  was  said  to  be  a  common  thing  for 
the  baser  order  of  tourists  to  drag  the  dead  face  into  view 
and  examine  it  and  comment  upon  it. 


j  ,- 


j-~  Its  /A'-t-'W   "Si /-*%.->■ 


CHAPTER   LVI. 

A   QUESTION  OF  LAW. 

THE  slaughter-house  is  gone  from  the  mouth  of  Bear 
Creek  and  so  is  the  small  jail  (or  "  calaboose  ")  which 
once  stood  in  its  neighborhood.  A  citizen  asked,  "  Do  you 
remember  when  Jimmy  Finn,  the  town  drunkard,  was  burned 
to  death  in  the  calaboose  ? " 

Observe,  now,  how  history  becomes  denied,  through  lapse 
of  time  and  the  help  of  the  bad  memories  of  men.  Jimmy 
Finn  was  not  burned  in  the  calaboose,  but  died  a  natural 
death  in  a  tan  vat,  of  a  combination  of  delirium  tremens  and 
spontaneous  combustion.  When  I  say  natural  death,  I  mean 
it  was  a  natural  death  for  Jimmy  Finn  to  die.  The  calaboose 
victim  was  not  a  citizen  ;  he  was  a  poor  stranger,  a  harmless 
whiskey-sodden  tramp.  I  know  more  about  his  case  than 
anybody  else  ;  I  knew  too  much  of  it,  in  that  bygone  day,  to 
relish  speaking  of  it.  That  tramp  was  wandering  about  the 
streets  one  chilly  evening,  with  a  pipe  in  his  mouth,  and 
begging  for  a  match  ;  he  got  neither  matches  nor  courtesy  ; 
on  the  contrary,  a  troop  of  bad  little  boys  followed  him 
around  and  amused  themselves  with  nagging  and  annoying 
him.  I  assisted  ;  but  at  last,  some  appeal  which  the  way- 
farer made  for  forbearance,  accompanying  it  with  a  pathetic 
reference  to  his  forlorn  and  friendless  condition,  touched 
such  sense  of  shame  and  remnant  of  right  feeling  as  were  left 
in  me,  and  I  went  away  and  got  him  some  matches,  and  then 
hied  me  home  and  to  bed,  heavily  weighted  as  to  conscience, 
and  unbuoyant  in  spirit.    An  hour  or  two  afterward,  the  man 


AN  ILL-OMENED  FAVOR.  549 

was  arrested  and  locked  up  in  the  calaboose  by  the  marshal 
—  large  name  for  a  constable,  but  that  was  his  title.  At  two 
in  the  morning,  the  church  bells  rang  for  fire,  and  everybody 
turned  out,  of  course  —  I  with  the  rest.  The  tramp  had  used 
his  matches  disastrously  :  he  had  set  his  straw  bed  on  fire, 
and  the  oaken  sheathing  of  the  room  had  caught.  When  I 
reached  the  ground,  two  hundred  men,  women,  and  children 
stood  massed  together,  transfixed  with  horror,  and  staring 
at  the  grated  windows  of  the  jail.  Behind  the  iron  bars,  and 
tugging  frantically  at  them,  and  screaming  for  help,  stood 
the  tramp ;  he  seemed  like  a  black  object  set  against  a  sun, 
so  white  and  intense  was  the  light  at  his  back.  That  mar- 
shal could  not  be  found,  and  he  had  the  only  key.  A  batter- 
ing-ram was  quickly  improvised,  and  the  thunder  of  its  blows 
upon  the  door  had  so  encouraging  a  sound  that  the  spectators 
broke  into  wild  cheering,  and  believed  the  merciful  battle 
won.  But  it  was  not  so.  The  timbers  were  too  strong ; 
they  did  not  yield.  It  was  said  that  the  man's  death-grip 
still  held  fast  to  the  bars  after  he  was  dead ;  and  that  in 
this  position  the  fires  wrapped  him  about  and  consumed  him. 
As  to  this,  I  do  not  know.  What  was  seen  after  I  recognized 
the  face  that  was  pleading  through  the  bars  was  seen  by 
others,  not  by  me. 

I  saw  that  face,  so  situated,  every  night  for  a  long  time 
afterward ;  and  I  believed  myself  as  guilty  of  the  man's 
death  as  if  I  had  given  him  the  matches  purposely  that  he 
might  burn  himself  up  with  them.  I  had  not  a  doubt  that  I 
should  be  hanged  if  my  connection  with  this  tragedy  were 
found  out.  The  happenings  and  the  impressions  of  that  time 
are  burnt  into  my  memory,  and  the  study  of  them  entertains 
me  as  much  now  as  they  themselves  distressed  me  then.  If 
anybody  spoke  of  that  grisly  matter,  I  was  all  ears  in  a 
moment,  and  alert  to  hear  what  might  be  said,  for  I  was 
always  dreading  and  expecting  to  find  out  that  I  was  sus- 
pected ;  and  so  fine  and  so  delicate  was  the  perception  of  my 
guilty  conscience,  that  it  often  detected  suspicion  in  the  most 


550 


EEMORSEFUL  DREAMS. 


purposeless  remarks,  and  in  looks,  gestures,  glances  of  the 
eye  which  had  no  significance,  but  which  sent  me  shivering 
away  in  a  panic  of  fright,  just  the  same.  And  how  sick  it 
made  me  when  somebody  dropped,  howsoever  carelessly  and 
barren  of  intent,  the  remark  that  "  murder  will  out !  "  For 
a  boy  of  ten  years,  I  was  carrying  a  pretty  weighty  cargo. 

All  this  time  I  was  blessedly  forgetting  one  thing  —  the 
fact  that  I  was  an  inveterate  talker  in  my  sleep.  But  one 
night  I  awoke  and  found  my  bed-mate  —  my  younger  brother 
—  sitting  up  in  bed  and  contemplating  me  by  the  light  of 

the  moon.  I  said: — 
"What    is   the 
matter  ? " 

"  You  talk  so 
much  I  can't 
sleep." 

I  came  to  a  sit- 
ting posture  in 
an  instant,  with 
my  kidneys  in  my 
throat  and  my 
hair  on  end. 

"What  did  I 
say  ?  Quick — out 
with  it — what  did 
I  say?" 


I   TAMPER  "WITH   MX    CONSCIENCE. 


"  Nothing  much." 

"  It 's  a  lie  —  you  know  everything." 

"  Everything  about  what  ? " 

"  You  know  well  enough.     About  thaV 

"  About  what  ? — I  don't  know  what  you  are  talking  about. 
I  think  you  are  sick  or  crazy  or  something.  But  anyway, 
you  're  awake,  and  I  '11  get  to  sleep  while  I  've  got  a  chance." 

He  fell  asleep  and  I  lay  there  in  a  cold  sweat,  turning  this 
new  terror  over  in  the  whirling  chaos  which  did  duty  as  my 
mind.     The  burden  of  my  thought  was,  How  much  did  I 


DIREFUL   SUSPENSE.  551 

divulge  ?  How  much  does  he  know  ?  —  what  a  distress  is 
this  uncertainty  !  But  by  and  by  I  evolved  an  idea  —  I  would 
wake  my  brother  and  probe  him  with  a  supposititious  case. 
I  shook  him  up,  and  said  — 

"  Suppose  a  man  should  come  to  you  drunk  —  " 

"  This  is  foolish  —  I  never  get  drunk." 

"  I  don't  mean  you,  idiot  —  I  mean  the  man.  Suppose  a 
man  should  come  to  you  drunk,  and  borrow  a  knife,  or  a 
tomahawk,  or  a  pistol,  and  you  forgot  to  tell  him  it  was 
loaded,  and  —  " 

"  How  could  you  load  a  tomahawk  ?  " 

"  I  don't  mean  the  tomahawk,  and  I  did  n't  say  the  toma- 
hawk ;  I  said  the  pistol.  Now  don't  you  keep  breaking  in  that 
way,  because  this  is  serious.     There 's  been  a  man  killed." 

"  What !    In  this  town  ?  " 

"  Yes,  in  this  town." 

"  Well,  go  on  —  I  won't  say  a  single  word." 

"  Well,  then,  suppose  you  forgot  to  tell  him  to  be  careful 
with  it,  because  it  was  loaded,  and  he  went  off  and  shot  him- 
self with  that  pistol,  —  fooling  with  it,  you  know,  and  prob- 
ably doing  it  by  accident,  being  drunk.  Well,  would  it  be 
murder  ?  " 

"  No  —  suicide." 

"  No,  no.  I  don't  mean  his  act,  I  mean  yours  :  would  you 
be  a  murderer  for  letting  him  have  that  pistol  ?  " 

After  deep  thought  came  this  answer,  — 

"  Well,  I  should  think  I  was  guilty  of  something  —  maybe 
murder  —  yes,  probably  murder,  but  I  don't  quite  know." 

This  made  me  very  uncomfortable.  However,  it  was  not 
a  decisive  verdict.  I  should  have  to  set  out  the  real  case  — 
there  seemed  to  be  no  other  way.  But  I  would  do  it  cau- 
tiously, and  keep  a  watch  out  for  suspicious  effects.  I 
said :  — 

"  I  was  supposing  a  case,  but  I  am  coming  to  the  real  one 
now.  Do  you  know  how  the  man  came  to  be  burned  up  in 
the  calaboose  ? " 


552  A  SICKENING  UNCERTAINTY. 

"  No." 

"  Have  n't  you  the  least  idea  ?  " 

"  Not  the  least." 

"  Wish'you  may  die  in  your  tracks  if  you  have  ?" 

"  Yes,  wish  I  may  die  in  my  tracks." 

"  Well,  the  way  of  it  was  this.  The  man  wanted  some 
matches  to  light  his  pipe.  A  boy  got  him  some.  The  man 
set  fire  to  the  calaboose  with  those  very  matches,  and  burnt 
himself  up." 

"  Is  that  so  ?  " 

"  Yes,  it  is.     Now,  is  that  boy  a  murderer,  do  you  think  ? " 

"  Let  me  see.     The  man  was  drunk  ? " 

"  Yes,  he  was  drunk." 

"  Very  drunk  ? " 

"  Yes." 

"  And  the  boy  knew  it  ? " 

"  Yes,  he  knew  it." 

There  was  a  long  pause.  Then  came  this  heavy  ver- 
dict :  — 

"If  the  man  was  drunk,  and  the  boy  knew  it,  the  boy 
murdered  that  man.     This  is  certain." 

Faint,  sickening  sensations  crept  along  all  the  fibres  of  my. 
body,  and  I  seemed  to  know  how  a  person  feels  who  hears 
his  death  sentence  pronounced  from  the  bench.  I  waited 
to  hear  what  my  brother  would  say  next.  I  believed  I  knew 
what  it  would  be,  and  I  was  right.     He  said,  — 

"  I  know  the  boy." 

I  had  nothing  to  say  ;  so  I  said  nothing.  I  simply  shud- 
dered.    Then  he  added,  — 

"  Yes,  before  you  got  half  through  telling  about  the 
thing,  I  knew  perfectly  well  who  the  boy  was ;  it  was 
Ben  Coontz!" 

I  came  out  of  my  collapse  as  one  who  rises  from  the  dead. 
I  said,  with  admiration  :  — 

"  Why,  how  in  the  world  did  you  ever  guess  it  ? " 

"  You  told  it  in  your  sleep." 


RELEASED   AND   RELIEVED. 


553 


I  said  to  myself,  "  How  splendid  that  is  !  This  is  a  habit 
which  must  be  cultivated." 

My  brother  rattled  innocently  on  :  — 

"  When  you  were  talking  in  your  sleep,  you  kept  mumbling 
something  about  '  matches,'  which  I  could  n't  make  anything 
out  of ;  but  just  now,  when  you  began  to  tell  me  about  the 
man  and  the  calaboose  and  the  matches,  I  remembered  that 
in  your  sleep  you  mentioned  Ben  Coontz  two  or  three  times ; 
so  I  put  this  and  that  together,  you  see,  and  right  away  1 
knew  it  was  Ben  that  burnt  that  man  up." 

I  praised  his  sa- 
gacity effusively. 
Presently  he 
asked,  — 

"  Are  you  going 
to  give  him  up  to 
the  law  ? " 

"No,"  I  said; 
"  I  believe  that 
this  will  be  a 
lesson   to   him. 
I    shall    keep    an 
eye    on    him,    of 
course,  for  that  is 
but  right ;  but  if 
he  stops  where  he  is  and  reforms,  it  shall  never  be  said  that 
I  betrayed  him." 

"  How  good  you  are  !  " 

"  Well,  I  try  to  be.  It  is  all  a  person  can  do  in  a  world 
like  this." 

And  now,  my  burden  being  shifted  to  other  shoulders,  my 
terrors  soon  faded  away. 

The  day  before  we  left  Hannibal,  a  curious  thing  fell  under 
my  notice,  —  the  surprising  spread  which  longitudinal  time 
undergoes  there.  I  learned  it  from  one  of  the  most  unosten- 
tatious of  men,  —  the  colored  coachman  of  a  friend  of  mine, 


MY  BURDEN   IS   LIFTED. 


554 


LOST  IS  GAINED. 


who  lives  three  miles  from  town.  He  was  to  call  for  me  at 
the  Park  Hotel  at  7.30  p.  m.,  and  drive  me  out.  But  he 
missed  it  considerably,  —  did  not  arrive  till  ten.  He  ex- 
cused himself  by  saying  :  — 

"  De  time  is  mos'  an  hour  en  a  half  slower  in  de  country 
en  what  it  is  in  de  town;  you'll  be  in  plenty  time,  boss. 
Sometimes  we  shoves  out  early  for  church,  Sunday,  en 
fetches  up  dah  right  plum  in  de  middle  er  de  sermon. 
Diffunce  in  de  time.  A  body  can't  make  no  calculations 
'bout  it." 

I  had  lost  two  hours  and  a  half ;  but  I  had  learned  a  fact 
worth  four. 


CHAPTER  LVIL 


AN  ARCHANGEL. 


FROM  St.  Louis  northward  there  are  all  the  enlivening 
signs  of  the  presence  of  active,  energetic,  intelligent, 
prosperous,  practical  nineteenth-century  populations.  The 
people  don't  dream,  they  work.  The  happy  result  is  manifest 
all  around  in  the  substantial  outside  aspect  of  things,  and  the 
suggestions  of  wholesome  life  and  comfort  that  everywhere 
appear. 

Quincy  is  a  notable  example,  —  a  brisk,  handsome,  well- 
ordered  city  ;  and  now,  as  formerly,  interested  in  art,  letters, 
and  other  high  things. 

But  Marion  City  is  an  exception.  Marion  City  has  gone 
backwards  in  a  most  unaccountable  way.  This  metropolis 
promised  so  well  that  the  projectors  tacked  "  city "  to  its 
name  in  the  very  beginning,  with  full  confidence ;  but  it  was 
bad  prophecy.  When  I  first  saw  Marion  City,  thirty-five 
years  ago,  it  contained  one  street,  and  nearly  or  quite  six 
houses.  It  contains  but  one  house  now,  and  this  one,  in' 
a  state  of  ruin,  is  getting  ready  to  follow  the  former  five 
into  the  river. 

Doubtless  Marion  City  was  too  near  to  Quincy.  It  had 
another  disadvantage  :  it  was  situated  in  a  flat  mud  bottom, 
below  high-water  mark,  whereas  Quincy  stands  high  up  on 
the  slope  of  a  hill. 

In  the  beginning  Quincy  had  the  aspect  and  ways  of  a 
model  New  England  town  :  and  these  she  has  yet :  broad, 
clean  streets,  trim,  neat  dwellings  and  lawns,  fine  mansions, 


556  RIVER   TOWNS. 

stately  blocks  of  commercial  buildings.  And  there  are 
ample  fair-grounds,  a  well  kept  park,  and  many  attractive 
drives ;  library,  reading-rooms,  a  couple  of  colleges,  some 
handsome  and  costly  churches,  and  a  grand  court-house, 
with  grounds  which  occupy  a  square.  The  population  of 
the  city  is  thirty  thousand.  There  are  some  large  factories 
here,  and  manufacturing,  of  many  sorts,  is  clone  on  a  great 
scale. 

La  Grange  and  Canton  are  growing  towns,  but  I  missed 
Alexandria  ;  was  told  it  was  under  water,  but  would  come  up 
to  blow  in  the  summer. 

Keokuk  was  easily  recognizable.  I  lived  there  in  1857,  — 
an  extraordinary  year  there  in  real-estate  matters.  The 
"  boom "  was  something  wonderful.  Everybody  bought, 
everybody  sold,  —  except  widows  and  preachers  ;  they  al- 
ways hold  on  ;  and  when  the  tide  ebbs,  they  get  left.  Any- 
thing in  the  semblance  of  a  town  lot,  no  matter  how  situated, 
was  salable,  and  at  a  figure  which  would  still  have  been 
high  if  the  ground  had  been  sodded  with  greenbacks. 

The  town  has  a  population  of  fifteen  thousand  now,  and  is 
progressing  with  a  healthy  growth.  It  was  night,  and  we 
could  not  see  details,  for  which  we  were  sorry,  for  Keokuk 
has  the  reputation  of  being  a  beautiful  city.  It  was  a  pleas- 
ant one  to  live  in  long  ago,  and  doubtless  has  advanced,  not 
retrograded,  in  that  respect. 

A  mighty  work  which  was  in  progress  there  in  my  day  is 
finished  now.  This  is  the  canal  over  the  Rapids.  It  is  eight 
miles  long,  three  hundred  feet  wide,  and  is  in  no  place  less 
than  six  feet  deep.  Its  masonry  is  of  the  majestic  kind  which 
the  War  Department  usually  deals  in,  and  will  endure  like  a 
Roman  aqueduct.     The  work  cost  four  or  five  millions. 

After  an  hour  or  two  spent  with  former  friends,  we  started 
up  the  river  again.  Keokuk,  a  long  time  ago,  was  an  occa- 
sional loafing-placc  of  that  erratic  genius,  Henry  Clay  Dean. 
I  believe  I  never  saw  him  but  once  ;  but  he  was  much  talked 
of  when  I  lived  there.     This  is  what  was  said  of  him  :  — 


AN  ERRATIC   GENIUS. 


557 


He  began  life  poor  and  without  education.  But  he  edu- 
cated himself  —  on  the  curb-stones  of  Keokuk.  He  would 
sit  down  on  a  curb-stone  with  his  book,  careless  or  uncon- 
scious of  the  clatter  of  commerce  and  the  tramp  of  the  pass- 
ing crowds,  and  bury  himself  in  his  studies  by  the  hour, 
never  changing  his  position  except  to  draw  in  his  knees  now 
and  then  to  let  a  dray  pass  unobstructed  ;  and  when  his  book 
was  finished,  its  contents, 
however  abstruse,  had  been 
burnt  into  his  memory,  and 
were  his  permanent  posses- 
sion. In  this  way  he  acquired 
a  vast  hoard  of  all  sorts  of 
learning,  and  had  it  pigeon- 
holed in  his  head  where  he 
could  put  his  intellectual 
hand  on  it  whenever  it  was 
wanted. 

His  clothes  differed  in  no 
respect  from  a  "  wharf-rat's," 
except  that  they  were  rag- 
geder,  more  ill-assorted  and 
inharmonious  (and  therefore 
more  extravagantly  pictur- 
esque),  and   several   layers 

dirtier.     Nobody  could  infer  the  master-mind  in  the  top  of 
that  edifice  from  the  edifice  itself. 

He  was  an  orator,  —  by  nature  in  the  first  place,  and  later 
by  the  training  of  experience  and  practice.  When  he  was  out 
on  a  canvass,  his  name  was  a  loadstone  which  drew  the  far- 
mers to  his  stump  from  fifty  miles  around.  His  theme  was 
always  politics.  He  used  no  notes,  for  a  volcano  does  not 
need  notes.  In  1862,  a  son  of  Keokuk's  late  distinguished 
citizen,  Mr.  Claggett,  gave  me  this  incident  concerning  Dean  ; 

The  war  feeling  was  running  high  in  Keokuk  (in  '61),  and 
a  great  mass  meeting  was  to  be  held  on  a  certain  day  in  the 


HENRY    CLAY    DEAN. 


558  FILLING  A   GAP. 

new  Athenasuni.  A  distinguished  stranger  was  to  address 
the  house.  After  the  building  had  been  packed  to  its  utmost 
capacity  with  sweltering  folk  of  both  sexes,  the  stage  still 
remained  vacant,  —  the  distinguished  stranger  had  failed  to 
connect.  The  crowd  grew  impatient,  and  by  and  by  indig- 
nant and  rebellious.  About  this  time  a  distressed  manager 
discovered  Dean  on  a  curb-stone,  explained  the  dilemma  to 
him,  took  his  book  away  from  him,  rushed  him  into  the 
building  the  back  way,  and  told  him  to  make  for  the  stage 
and  save  his  country. 

Presently  a  sudden  silence  fell  upon  the  grumbling  audi- 
ence, and  everybody's  eyes  sought  a  single  point,  —  the  wide, 
empty,  carpetless  stage.  A  figure  appeared  there  whose 
aspect  was  familiar  to  hardly  a  dozen  persons  present.  It  was 
the  scarecrow  Dean,  —  in  foxy  shoes,  down  at  the  heels  ;  socks 
of  odd  colors,  also  "  down  ;  "  damaged  trousers,  relics  of  anti- 
quity, and  a  world  too  short,  exposing  some  inches  of  naked 
ankle  ;  an  unbuttoned  vest,  also  too  short,  and  exposing  a 
zone  of  soiled  and  wrinkled  linen  between  it  and  the  waist- 
band ;  shirt  bosom  open ;  long  black  handkerchief,  wound 
round  and  round  the  neck  like  a  bandage ;  bob-tailed  blue 
coat,  reaching  down  to  the  small  of  the  back,  with  sleeves 
which  left  four  inches  of  forearm  unprotected ;  small,  stiff- 
brimmed  soldier-cap  hung  on  a  corner  of  the  bump  of  — 
whichever  bump  it  was.  This  figure  moved  gravely  out  upon 
the  stage  and,  with  sedate  and  measured  step,  down  to  the 
front,  where  it  paused,  and  dreamily  inspected  the  house, 
saying  no  word.  The  silence  of  surprise  held  its  own 
for  a  moment,  then  was  broken' by  a  just  audible  ripple  of 
merriment  which  swept  the  sea  of  faces  like  the  wash  of  a 
wave.  The  figure  remained  as  before,  thoughtfully  inspect- 
ing. Another  wave  started,  —  laughter,  this  time.  It  was 
followed  by  another,  then  a  third,  —  this  last  one  boisterous. 

And  now  the  stranger  stepped  back  one  pace,  took  off  his 
soldier-cap,  tossed  it  into  the  wing,  and  began  to  speak,  with 
deliberation,  nobody  listening,  everybody  laughing  and  whis- 


"the  house  began  to  break  into  applause. 


LUNATIC   OR  ARCHANGEL?  561 

pering.  The  speaker  talked  on  unembarrassed,  and  presently 
delivered  a  shot  which  went  home,  and  silence  and  attention 
resulted.  He  followed  it  quick  and  fast,  with  other  telling 
things  ;  warmed  to  his  work  and  began  to  pour  his  words 
out,  instead  of  dripping  them ;  grew  hotter  and  hotter,  and 
fell  to  discharging  lightnings  and  thunder,  —  and  now  the 
house  began  to  break  into  applause,  to  which  the  speaker 
gave  no  heed,  but  went  hammering  straight  on  ;  unwound 
his  black  bandage  and  cast  it  away,  still  thundering  ;  pres- 
ently discarded  the  bob-tailed  coat  and  flung  it  aside,  tiring  up 
higher  and  higher  all  the  time  ;  finally  flung  the  vest  after 
the  coat ;  and  then  for  an  untimed  period  stood  there,  like 
another  Vesuvius,  spouting  smoke  and  flame,  lava  and  ashes, 
raining  pumice-stone  and  cinders,  shaking  the  moral  earth 
with  intellectual  crash  upon  crash,  explosion  upon  explosion, 
while  the  mad  multitude  stood  upon  their  feet  in  a  solid  body, 
answering  back  with  a  ceaseless  hurricane  of  cheers,  through 
a  thrashing  snow-storm  of  waving  handkerchiefs. 

"  When  Dean  came,"  said  Claggett,  "  the  people  thought 
he  was  an  escaped  lunatic ;  but  when  he  went,  they  thought 
he  was  an  escaped  archangel." 

Burlington,  home  of  the  sparkling  Burdette,  is  another 
hill  city ;  and  also  a  beautiful  one ;  unquestionably  so  ;  a 
fine  and  flourishing  city,  with  a  population  of  twenty-five 
thousand,  and  belted  with  busy  factories  of  nearly  every 
imaginable  description.  It  was  a  very  sober  city,  too  —  for 
the  moment — for  a  most  sobering  bill  was  pending;  a  bill 
to  forbid  the  manufacture,  exportation,  importation,  pur- 
chase, sale,  borrowing,  lending,  stealing,  drinking,  smelling, 
or  possession,  by  conquest,  inheritance,  intent,  accident,  or 
otherwise,  in  the  State  of  Iowa,  of  each  and  every  deleterious 
beverage  known  to  the  human  race,  except  water.  This 
measure  was  approved  by  all  the  rational  people  in  the 
State ;  but  not  by  the  bench  of  Judges. 

Burlington  has  the  progressive  modern  city's  full  equip- 
ment  of    devices    for    right   and    intelligent    government ; 

36 


562 


CLEAN  OUTGROWN. 


including  a  paid  fire  department,  a  thing  which  the  great 
city  of  New  Orleans  is  without,  but  still  employs  that  relic  of 
antiquity,  the  independent  system. 

In  Burlington,  as  in  all  these  Upper-River  towns,  one 
breathes  a  go-ahead  atmosphere  which  tastes  good  in  the 
nostrils.     An  opera-house  has  lately  been  built  there  which 


A   FORMER   RESIDENT. 


is  in  strong  contrast  with  the  shabby  dens  which  usually 
do  duty  as  theatres  in  cities  of  Burlington's  size. 

We  had  not  time  to  go  ashore  in  Muscatine,  but  had  a 
daylight  view  of  it  from  the  boat.  I  lived  there  awhile, 
many  years  ago,  but  the  place,  now,  had  a  rather  unfamiliar 
look ;  so  I  suppose  it  has  clear  outgrown  the  town  which  I 
used  to  know.  In  fact,  I  know  it  has  ;  for  I  remember  it 
as  a  small  place  —  which  it  is  n't  now.  But  I  remember 
it  best  for  a  lunatic  who  caught  me  out  in  the  fields,  one 
Sunday,  and  extracted  a  butcher-knife  from  his  boot  and 
proposed   to  carve   me  up  with   it,  unless  I  acknowledged 


PLEASANT   REMEMBRANCES.  563 

him  to  be  the  only  son  of  the  Devil.  I  tried  to  compromise 
on  an  acknowledgment  that  he  was  the  only  member  of  the 
family  I  had  met ;  but  that  did  not  satisfy  him ;  he  would  n't 
have  any  half-measures ;  I  must  say  he  was  the  sole  and 
only  son  of  the  Devil  —  and  he  whetted  his  knife  on  his 
boot.  It  did  not  seem  worth  while  to  make  trouble  about 
a  little  thing  like  that ;  so  I  swung  round  to  his  view  of  the 
matter  and  saved  my  skin  whole.  Shortly  afterward,  he 
went  to  visit  his  father ;  and  as  he  has  not  turned  up  since, 
I  trust  he  is  there  yet. 

And  I  remember  Muscatine  —  still  more  pleasantly  —  for 
its  summer  sunsets.  I  have  never  seen  any,  on  either  side 
of  the  ocean,  that  equalled  them.  They  used  the  broad 
smooth  river  as  a  canvas,  and  painted  on  it  every  imagina- 
ble dream  of  color,  from  the  mottled  daintinesses  and  deli- 
cacies of  the  opal,  all  the  way  up,  through  cumulative 
intensities,  to  blinding  purple  and  crimson  conflagrations 
which  were  enchanting  to  the  eye,  but  sharply  tried  it  at 
the  same  time.  All  the  Upper  Mississippi  region  has  these 
extraordinary  sunsets  as  a  familiar  spectacle.  It  is  the  true 
Sunset  Land  :  I  am  sure  no  other  country  can  show  so  good 
a  right  to  the  name.  The  sunrises  are  also  said  to  be 
exceedingly  fine.     I  do  not  know. 


CHAPTER  LV1I1. 


ON   THE   UPPER   RIVER. 


"  I  "'HE  big  towns  drop  in,  thick  and  fast,  now  :  and  between 
■*■       stretch  processions  of  thrifty  farms,  not  desolate  soli- 
tude.   Hour  by  hour,  the  boat  plows 
deeper  and  deeper  into  the  great  and 
populous  Northwest ;  and  with  each 
successive    section   of 
it   which  is  revealed, 
one's  surprise  and  re- 
spect gather  emphasis 


AN   INDEPENDENT 
RACE. 


and    increase. 

Such  a  people,  and 

such  achievements 

as    theirs,    compel 

"      "-'  f  " "-"~<  homage.      This    is 

an  independent  race  who  think  for 

themselves,  and  who  are  competent  to  do  it,  because  they 

are  educated  and  enlightened  ;  they  read,  they  keep  abreast 


AMAZING   GROWTHS.  565 

of  the  best  and  newest  thought,  they  fortify  every  weak  place 
in  their  land  with  a  school,  a  college,  a  library,  and  a  news- 
paper ;  and  they  live  under  law.  Solicitude  for  the  future  of 
a  race  like  this  is  not  in  order. 

This  region  is  new ;  so  new  that  it  may  be  said  to  be  still 
in  its  babyhood.  By  what  it  has  accomplished  while  still 
teething,  one  may  forecast  what  marvels  it  will  do  in  the 
strength  of  its  maturity.  It  is  so  new  that  the  foreign 
tourist  has  not  heard  of  it  yet ;  and  has  not  visited  it.  For 
sixty  years,  the  foreign  tourist  has  steamed  up  and  down 
the  river  between  St.  Louis  and  New  Orleans,  and  then  gone 
home  and  written  his  book,  believing  he  had  seen  all  of  the 
river  that  was  worth  seeing  or  that  had  anything  to  see.  In 
not  six  of  all  these  books  is  there  mention  of  these  Upper- 
River  towns  —  for  the  reason  that  the  five  or  six  tourists 
who  penetrated  this  region  did  it  before  these  towns  were 
projected.  The  latest  tourist  of  them  all  (1878)  made  the 
same  old  regulation  trip  —  he  had  not  heard  that  there  was 
anything  north  of  St.  Louis. 

Yet  there  was.  There  was  this  amazing  region,  bristling 
with  great  towns,  projected  day  before  yesterday,  so  to 
speak,  and  built  next  morning.  A  score  of  them  number 
from  fifteen  hundred  to  five  thousand  people.  Then  we 
have  Muscatine,  ten  thousand ;  Winona,  ten  thousand ; 
Moline,  ten  thousand ;  Rock  Island,  twelve  thousand  ;  La 
Crosse,  twelve  thousand  ;  Burlington,  twenty-five  thousand  ; 
Dubuque,  twenty-five  thousand  ;  Davenport,  thirty  thou- 
sand;  St.  Paul,  fifty-eight  thousand;  Minneapolis,  sixty  thou- 
sand and  upward. 

The  foreign  tourist  has  never  heard  of  these ;  there  is  no 
note  of  them  in  his  books.  They  have  sprung  up  in  the 
night,  while  he  slept.  So  new  is  this  region,  that  I,  who  am 
comparatively  young,  am  yet  older  than  it  is.  When  I  was 
born,  St.  Paul  had  a  population  of  three  persons,  Minne- 
apolis had  just  a  third  as  many.  The  then  population  of 
Minneapolis  died  two  .years  ago  ;  and  when  he  died  he  had 


566  OLD   TIMES   AND   NEW. 

seen  himself  undergo  an  increase,  in  forty  years,  of  fifty- 
nine  thousand  nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine  persons.  He 
had  a  frog's  fertility. 

I  must  explain  that  the  figures  set  down  above,  as  the 
population  of  St.  Paul  and  Minneapolis,  are  several  months 
old.  These  towns  are  far  larger  now.  In  fact,  I  have  just 
seen  a  newspaper  estimate  which  gives  the  former  seventy- 
one  thousand,  and  the  latter  seventy-eight  thousand.  This 
book  will  not  reach  the  public  for  six  or  seven  months  yet ; 
none  of  the  figures  will  be  worth  much  then. 

We  had  a  glimpse  of  Davenport,  which  is  another  beauti- 
ful city,  crowning  a  hill  —  a  phrase  which  applies  to  all 
these  towns ;  for  they  are  all  comely,  all  well  built,  clean, 
orderly,  pleasant  to  the  eye,  and  cheering  to  the  spirit;  and 
they  are  all  situated  upon  hills.  Therefore  we  will  give 
that  phrase  a  rest.  The  Indians  have  a  tradition  that 
Marquette  and  Joliet  camped  where  Davenport  now  stands, 
in  1673.  The  next  white  man  who  camped  there,  did  it 
about  a  hundred  and  seventy  years  later  —  in  1834.  Daven- 
port has  gathered  its  thirty  thousand  people  within  the  past 
thirty  years.  She  sends  more  children  to  her  schools  now, 
than  her  whole  population  numbered  twenty-three  years  ago. 
She  has  the  usual  Upper-River  quota  of  factories,  news- 
papers, and  institutions  of  learning ;  she  has  telephones, 
local  telegraphs,  an  electric  alarm,  and  an  admirable  paid 
fire  department,  consisting  of  six  hook  and  ladder  compa- 
nies, four  steam  fire  engines,  and  thirty  churches.  Daven- 
port is  the  official  residence  of  two  bishops  —  Episcopal  and 
Catholic. 

Opposite  Davenport  is  the  flourishing  town  of  Rock 
Island,  which  lies  at  the  foot  of  the  Upper  Rapids.  A 
great  railroad  bridge  connects  the  two  towns  —  one  of  the 
thirteen  which  fret  the  Mississippi  and  the  pilots,  between 
St.  Louis  and  St.  Paul. 

The  charming  island  of  Rock  Island,  three  miles  long 
and  half  a  mile  wide,  belongs  to  the  United  States,  and  the 


HAOW  TO  PLOUGH. 


567 


Government  has  turned  it  into  a  wonderful  park,  enhancing 
its  natural  attractions  by  art,  and  threading  its  fine  forests 
with  many  miles  of  drives.  Near  the  centre  of  the  island 
one  catches  glimpses,  through  the  trees,  of  ten  vast  stone 
four-story  buildings,  each  of  which  covers  an  acre  of  ground. 
These  are  the  Government  workshops ;  for  the  Rock  Island 
establishment  is  a  national  armory  and  arsenal. 

We  move  up  the  river  —  always  through  enchanting 
scenery,  there  being  no  other  kind  on  the  Upper  Mississippi 
—  and  pass  Mo- 
line,  a  centre  of 
vast  manufactur- 
ing industries  ; 
and  Clinton  and 
Lyons,  great  lum- 
ber centres; 
and  presently  j| 
reach  Dubuque,  ~ 
which  is  situ- 
ated in  a  rich 
mineral  region. 
The  lead  mines 
are  very  produc- 
tive, and  of  wide 
extent.  Dubuque 
has  a  great  num- 
ber of  manufacturing  establishments  ;  among  them  a  plough 
factory  which  has  for  customers  all  Christendom  in  general. 
At  least  so  I  was  told  by  an  agent  of  the  concern  who  was 
on  the  boat.     He  said  :  — 

"  You  show  me  any  country  under  the  sun  where  they 
really  know  how  to  plough,  and  if  I  don't  show  you  our  mark 
on  the  plough  they  use,  I  '11  eat  that  plough  ;  and  I  won't  ask 
for  any  Woostershyre  sauce  to  flavor  it  up  with,  either." 

All  this  part  of  the  river  is  rich  in  Indian  history  and  tra- 
ditions.   Black  Hawk's  was  once  a  puissant  name  hereabouts ; 


THE  MAN  WITH  A  TRADE  MARK. 


568  PICTURESQUE   AND   LEGENDARY. 

as  was  Keokuk's,  further  down.  A  few  miles  below  Du- 
buque is  the  Tete  de  Mort  —  Death's-head  rock,  or  bluff  — 
to  the  top  of  which  the  French  drove  a  band  of  Indians,  in 
early  times,  and  cooped  them  up  there,  with  death  for  a 
certainty,  and  only  the  manner  of  it  matter  of  choice  —  to 
starve,  or  jump  off  and  kill  themselves.  Black  Hawk 
adopted  the  ways  of  the  white  people,  toward  the  end  of  his 
life ;  and  when  he  died  he  was  buried,  near  Des  Moines,  in 
Christian  fashion,  modified  by  Indian  custom  ;  that  is  to  say, 
clothed  in  a  Christian  military  uniform,  and  with  a  Christian 
cane  in  his  hand,  but  deposited  in  the  grave  in  a  sitting 
posture.  Formerly,  a  horse  had  always  been  buried  with  a 
chief.  The  substitution  of  the  cane  shows  that  Black  Hawk's 
haughty  nature  was  really  humbled,  and  he  expected  to 
walk  when  he  got  over. 

We  noticed  that  above  Dubuque  the  water  of  the  Missis- 
sippi was  olive-green  —  rich  and  beautiful  and  semi-trans- 
parent, with  the  sun  on  it.  Of  course  the  water  was  nowhere 
as  clear  or  of  as  fine  a  complexion  as  it  is  in  some  other  sea- 
sons of  the  year ;  for  now  it  was  at  flood  stage,  and  there- 
fore dimmed  and  blurred  by  the  mud  manufactured  from 
caving  banks. 

The  majestic  bluffs  that  overlook  the  river,  along  through 
this  region,  charm  one  with  the  grace  and  variety  of  their 
forms,  and  the  soft  beauty  of  their  adornment.  The  steep 
verdant  slope,  whose  base  is  at  the  water's  edge,  is  topped  by 
a  lofty  rampart  of  broken,  turreted  rocks,  which  are  exqui- 
sitely rich  and  mellow  in  color  —  mainly  dark  browns  and 
dull  greens,  but  splashed  with  other  tints.  And  then  you 
have  the  shining  river,  winding  here  and  there  and  yonder,  its 
sweep  interrupted  at  intervals  by  clusters  of  wooded  islands 
threaded  by  silver  Channels  ;  and  you  have  glimpses  of  dis- 
tant villages,  asleep  upon  capes;  and  of  stealthy  rafts  slip- 
ping along  in  the  shade  of  the  forest  walls  ;  and  of  white 
steamers  vanishing  around  remote  points.  And  it  is  all 
as  tranquil  and  reposeful  as  dreamland,  and   has   nothing 


MAJESTY  AND   INNOCENCE. 


569 


this-worldly  about  it  —  nothing  to  hang  a  fret  or  a  worry 
upon. 

Until  the  unholy  train  comes  tearing  along  —  which  it 
presently  does,  ripping  the  sacred  solitude  to  rags  and  tat- 
ters with  its  devil's  warwhoop  and  the  roar  and  thunder  of 
its  rushing  wheels  —  and  straightway  you  are  back  in  this 
world,  and  with  one  of  its  frets  ready  to  hand  for  your  enter- 
tainment :  for  you  remember  that  this  is  the  very  road  whose 


MAJESTTC   BLUFFS 


stock  always  goes  down  after  you  buy  it,  and  always  goes  up 
again  as  soon  as  you  sell  it.  It  makes  me  shudder  to  this 
day,  to  remember  that  I  once  came  near  not  getting  rid  of 
my  stock  at  all.  It  must  be  an  awful  thing  to  have  a  rail- 
road left  on  your  hands. 

The  locomotive  is  in  sight  from  the  deck  of  the  steamboat 
almost  the  whole  way  from  St.  Louis  to  St.  Paul  —  eight 
hundred  miles.  These  railroads  have  made  havoc  with  the 
steamboat  commerce.     The  clerk  of  our  boat  was  a  steam- 


570 


CAPTAINS  USED   TO   SWELL. 


boat  clerk  before  these  roads  were  built.  In  that  day  the 
influx  of  population  was  so  great,  and  the  freight  business  so 
heavy,  that  the  boats  were  not  able  to  keep  up  with  the 
demands  made  upon  their  carrying  capacity  ;  consequently 
the  captains  were  very  independent  and  airy  —  pretty  "  big- 
gity,"  as  Uncle  Remus  would  say.  The  clerk  nut-shelled 
the  contrast  between  the  former  time  and  the  present, 
thus  :  — 

"  Boat  used  to  land  —  captain  on  hurricane  roof  —  mighty 


NUTH  K,     SAYS   SMITH. 

stiff  and  straight  —  iron  ramrod  for  a  spine  —  kid  gloves, 
plug  tile,  hair  parted  behind  —  man  on  shore  takes  off  hat 
and  says :  — 

" '  Got  twenty-eight  tons  of  wheat,  cap'n —  be  great  favor 
if  you  can  take  them.' 

"  Captain  says  :  — 

"  '  '11  take  two  of  them '  —  and  don't  even  condescend  to 
look  at  him. 


NOW  THEY   WEAKEN.  571 

"  But  now-a-days  the  captain  takes  off  his  old  slouch,  and 
smiles  all  the  way  around  to  the  back  of  his  ears,  and  gets 
off  a  how  which  he  has  n't  got  any  ramrod  to  interfere  with, 
and  says  :  — 

"  '  Glad  to  see  you,  Smith,  glad  to  see  you  —  you  're  look- 
ing well  —  have  n't  seen  you  looking  so  well  for  years  —  what 
you  got  for  us  ? ' 

" '  Nuth'n',  says  Smith  ;  and  keeps  his  hat  on,  and  just 
turns  his  back  and  goes  to  talking  with  somebody  else. 

"  Oh,  yes,  eight  years  ago,  the  captain  was  on  top ;  but  it 's 
Smith's  turn  now.  Eight  years  ago  a  boat  used  to  go  up 
the  river  with  every  stateroom  full,  and  people  piled  five  and 
six  deep  on  the  cabin  floor ;  and  a  solid  deck-load  of  immi- 
grants and  harvesters  down  below,  into  the  bargain.  To  get 
a  first-class  stateroom,  you  'd  got  to  prove  sixteen  quarter- 
ings  of  nobility  and  four  hundred  years  of  descent,  or  be 
personally  acquainted  with  the  nigger  that  blacked  the  cap- 
tain's boots.  But  it 's  all  changed  now  ;  plenty  staterooms 
above,  no  harvesters  below  —  there  's  a  patent  self-binder 
now,  and  they  don't  have  harvesters  any  more;  they  've 
gone  where  the  woodbine  twineth  —  and  they  did  n't  go  by 
steamboat,  either  ;  went  by  the  train." 

Up  in  this  region  we  met  massed  acres  of  lumber  rafts 
coming  down  —  but  not  floating  leisurely  along,  in  the  old- 
fashioned  way,  manned  with  joyous  and  reckless  crews  of 
fiddling,  song-singing,  whiskey-drinking,  breakdown-dancing 
rapscallions  ;  no,  the  whole  thing  was  shoved  swiftly  along 
by  a  powerful  stern-wheeler,  modern  fashion,  and  the  small 
crews  were  quiet,  orderly  men,  of  a  sedate  business  aspect, 
with  not  a  suggestion  of  romance  about  them  anywhere. 

Along  here,  somewhere,  on  a  black  night,  we  ran  some 
exceedingly  narrow  and  intricate  island-chutes  by  aid  of  the 
electric  light.  Behind  was  solid  blackness  —  a  crackless 
bank  of  it ;  ahead,  a  narrow  elbow  of  water,  curving  be- 
tween dense  walls  of  foliage  that  almost  touched  our  bows 
on  both  sides  ;  and  here  every  individual  leaf,  and  every 


572 


PRAIRIE   DU   CHIEN. 


individual  ripple  stood  out  in  its  natural  color,  and  flooded 
with  a  glare  as  of  noonday  intensified.  The  effect  was 
strange,  and  fine,  and  Aery  striking. 

We  passed  Prairie  du  Chien,  another  of  Father  Marquette's 
camping-places ;  and  after  some  hours  of  progress  through 
varied  and  beautiful  scenery,  reached  La  Crosse.  Here  is  a 
town  of  twelve  or  thirteen  thousand  population,  with  electric 
lighted  streets,  and  with  blocks  of  buildings  which  are  stately 
enough,  and  also  architecturally  fine  enough,  to  command 
respect  in  any  city.  It  is  a  choice  town,  and  we  made  satis- 
factory use  of  the  hour  allowed  us,  in  roaming  it  over,  though 
the  weather  was  rainier  than  necessary. 


CHAPTER  LIX. 


LEGENDS  AND   SCENERY. 


WE  added  several  passengers  to  our  list,  at  La  Crosse  ; 
among  others  an  old  gentleman  who  had  come  to 
this  northwestern  region  with  the  early  settlers,  and  was 


QUEEN  S   BLUFF. 


familiar  with  every  part  of  it.     Pardonably  proud  of  it,  too. 
He  said  :  — 

"  You  '11  find  scenery  between  here  and  St.  Paul  that  can 
give  the  Hudson  points.     You'll  have  the  Queen's  Bluff  — 


574  GRAND   SCENERY. 

seven  hundred  feet  high,  and  just  as  imposing  a  spectacle  as 
you  can  find  anywheres  ;  and  Trempeleau  Island,  which  is  n't 
like  any  other  island  in  America,  I  believe,  for  it  is  a  gigantic 
mountain,  with  precipitous  sides,  and  is  full  of  Indian  tradi- 
tions, and  used  to  be  full  of  rattlesnakes;  if  you  catch  the  sun 
just  right  there,  you  will  have  a  picture  that  will  stay  with 
you.  And  above  Winona  you  '11  have  lovely  prairies  ;  and 
then  come  the  Thousand  Islands,  too  beautiful  for  anything ; 
green  ?  why  you  never  saw  foliage  so  green,  nor  packed  so 
thick  ;  it 's  like  a  thousand  plush  cushions  afloat  on  a  look- 
ing-glass—  when  the  water  's  still ;  and  then  the  monstrous 
bluffs  on  both  sides  of  the  river  —  ragged,  rugged,  dark-com- 
plected—  just  the  frame  that 's  wanted  ;  you  always  want  a 
strong  frame,  you  know,  to  throw  up  the  nice  points  of  a  del- 
icate picture  and  make  them  stand  out." 

The  old  gentleman  also  told  us  a  touching  Indian  legend 
or  two  —  but  not  very  powerful  ones. 

After  this  excursion  into  history,  he  came  back  to  the 
scenery,  and  described  it,  detail  by  detail,  from  the  Thousand 
Islands  to  St.  Paul ;  naming  its  names  with  such  facility, 
tripping  along  his  theme  with  such  nimble  and  confident 
ease,  slamming  in  a  three-ton  word,  here  and  there,  with 
such  a  complacent  air  of 't  is  n't-anything,-I-can-do-it-any-time- 
I-want-to,  and  letting  off  fine  surprises  of  lurid  eloquence  at 
such  judicious  intervals,  that  I  presently  began  to  suspect  — 

But  no  matter  what  I  began  to  suspect.     Hear  him  :  — 

"  Ten  miles  above  Winona  we  come  to  Fountain  City, 
nestling  sweetly  at  the  feet  of  cliffs  that  lift  their  awful 
fronts,  Jovelike,  toward  the  blue  depths  of  heaven,  bathing 
them  in  virgin  atmospheres  that  have  known  no  other  con- 
tact save  that  of  angels'  wings. 

"  And  next  we  glide  through  silver  waters,  amid  lovely 
and  stupendous  aspects  of  nature  that  attune  our  hearts  to 
adoring  admiration,  about  twelve  miles,  and  strike  Mount 
Vernon,  six  hundred  feet  high,  with  romantic  ruins  of  a 
once  first-class  hotel  perched  far  among  the  cloud  shadows 


A   NATURAL  PYRAMID. 


575 


that  mottle  its  dizzy  heights  —  sole  remnant  of  once-flourish- 
ing Mount  Vernon,  town  of  early  days,  now  desolate  and 
utterly  deserted. 

"  And  so  we  move  on.  Past  Chimney  Rock  we  fly  —  noble 
shaft  of  six  hundred  fe,et ;  then  just  before  landing  at  Min- 
nieska  our  attention  is  attracted  by  a  most  striking  promon- 
tory  rising   over  five  hundred  feet  —  the   ideal   mountain 


CHIMNEY  ROCK. 

pyramid.  Its  conic  shape  —  thickly-wooded  surface  girding 
its  sides,  and  its  apex  like  that  of  a  cone,  cause  the  specta- 
tor to  wonder  at  nature's  workings.  From  its  dizzy  heights 
superb  views  of  the  forests,  streams,  bluffs,  hills  and  dales 
below  and  beyond  for  miles  are  brought  within  its  focus. 
What  grander  river  scenery  can  be  conceived,  as  we  gaze 
upon  this  enchanting  landscape,  from  the  uppermost  point 
of  these  bluffs  upon  the  valleys  below?  The  primeval 
wildness  and  awful  loneliness  of  these   sublime  creations 


576 


SCENES   FOR   RAPTURE. 


of  nature  and  nature's  God,  excite  feelings  of  unbounded 
admiration,  and  the  recollection  of  which  can  never  be 
effaced  from  the  memory,  as  we  view  them  in  any  direc- 
tion. 

"  Next  we  have  the  Lion's  Head  and  the  Lioness's  Head, 
carved  by  nature's  hand,  to  adorn  and  dominate  the  beaute- 


THE   MAIDEN  S    HOCK 


ous  stream  ;  and  then  anon 

tlie  river  widens,  and  a  most  charming  and  magnificent  view 
of  the  valley  before  us  suddenly  bursts  upon  our  vision ; 
rugged  hills,  clad  with  verdant  forests  from  summit  to 
base,  level  prairie  lands,  holding  in  their  lap  the  beautiful 
Wabasha,  City  of  the  Healing  Waters,  puissant  foe  of 
Bright's  disease,  and  that  grandest  conception  of  nature's 
works,  incomparable  Lake  Pepin  —  these  constitute  a  picture 
whereon  the  tourist's  eye  may  gaze  uncounted  hours,  with 
rapture  unappeased  and  unappeasable. 


A  RUDE   AWAKENING.  577 

"And  so  we  glide  along;  in  due  time  encountering  those 
majestic  domes,  the  mighty  Sugar  Loaf,  and  the  sublime 
Maiden's  Rock  —  which  latter,  romantic  superstition  has 
invested  with  a  voice ;  and  oft-times  as  the  birch  canoe  glides 
near,  at  twilight,  the  dusky  paddler  fancies  he  hears  the 
soft  sweet  music  of  the  long-departed  Winona,  darling  of 
Indian  song  and  story. 

"  Then  Frontenac  looms  upon  our  vision,  delightful  resort 
of  jaded  summer  tourists ;  then  progressive  Red  Wing ;  and 
Diamond  Bluff,  impressive  and  preponderous  in  its  lone  sub- 
limity; then  Prescott  and  the  St.  Croix;  and  anon  we  see 
bursting  upon  us  the  domes  and  steeples  of  St.  Paul,  giant 
young  chief  of  the  North,  marching  with  seven-league  stride 
in  the  van  of  progress,  banner-bearer  of  the  highest  and 
newest  civilization,  carving  his  beneficent  way  with  the  tom- 
ahawk of  commercial  enterprise,  sounding  the  warwhoop 
of  Christian  culture,  tearing  off  the  reeking  scalp  of  sloth 
and  superstition  to  plant  there  the  steam-plow  and  the  school- 
house — ever  in  his  front  stretch  arid  lawlessness,  ignorance, 
crime,  despair ;  ever  in  his  wake  bloom  the  jail,  the  gallows, 
and  the  pulpit;  and  ever — " 

"  Have  you  ever  travelled  with  a  panorama  ?  " 

"I  have  formerly  served  in  that  capacity." 

My  suspicion  was  confirmed. 

"  Do  you  still  travel  with  it  ?  " 

"  No,  she  is  laid  up  till  the  fall  season  opens.  I  am  helping 
now  to  work  up  the  materials  for  a  Tourist's  Guide  which  the 
St.  Louis  and  St.  Paul  Packet  Company  are  going  to  issue  this 
summer  for  the  benefit  of  travellers  who  go  by  that  line." 

"  When  you  were  talking  of  Maiden's  Rock,  you  spoke  of 
the  long-departed  Winona,  darling  of  Indian  song  and  story. 
Is  she  the  maiden  of  the  rock  ?  —  and  are  the  two  connected 
by  legend  ?" 

"Yes,  and  a  very  tragic  and  painful  one.  Perhaps  the 
most  celebrated,  as  well  as  the  most  pathetic,  of  all  the 
legends  of  the  Mississippi." 

37 


578 


THE   PANORAMIST  DECLAIMS. 


We  asked  him  to  tell  it.  He  dropped  out  of  his  conversa- 
tional vein  and  back  into  his  lecture-gait  without  an  effort, 
and  rolled  on  as  follows  :  — 

"A  little  distance  above  Lake  City  is  a  famous  point 
known  as  Maiden's  Rock,  which  is  not  only  a  picturesque 
spot,  but  is  full  of  romantic  interest  from  the  event  which 

gave  it  its  name.  Not  many  years 
ago  this  locality  was  a  favorite 
resort  for  the  Sioux  Indians  on 
account  of  the  fine  fishing  and 
hunting  to  be  had  there,  and  large 
numbers  of  them  were  always  to 
be  found  in  this  locality.  Among 
the  families  which  used  to  resort 
here,  was  one  belonging  to  the  tribe 
of  Wabasha.  We-no-na  (first-born) 
was  the  name  of  a  maiden  who  had 
plighted  her  troth  to  a  lover  be- 
longing to  the  same  band.  But  her 
stern  parents  had  promised  her 
hand  to  another,  a  famous  warrior, 
and  insisted  on  her  wedding  him. 
The  day  was  fixed  by  her  parents, 
to  her  great  grief.  She  appeared  to 
accede  to  the  proposal  and  accom- 
pany them  to  the  rock,  for  the  pur- 
pose of  gathering  flowers  for  the 
feast.  On  reaching  the  rock,  We- 
no-na  ran  to  its  summit  and  ♦stand- 
ing on  its  edge  upbraided  her  par- 
ents who  were  below,  for  their 
cruelty,  and  then  singing  a  death-dirge,  threw  herself  from 
the  precipice  and  clashed  them  in  pieces  on  the  rock  below." 
"  Dashed  who  in  pieces  —  her  parents  ? " 
"  Yes." 
"  Well,  it  certainly  was  a  tragic  business,  as   you  say. 


THE   LECTURER. 


ANOTHER  LOVER'S  LEAP.  579 

And  moreover,  there  is  a  startling  kind  of  dramatic  surprise 
about  it  which  I  was  not  looking  for.  It  is  a  distinct 
improvement  upon  the  threadbare  form  of  Indian  legend. 
There  are  fifty  Lover's  Leaps  along  the  Mississippi  from 
whose  summit  disappointed  Indian  girls  have  jumped,  but 
this  is  the  only  jump  in  the  lot  that  turned  out  in  the  right 
and  satisfactory  way.     What  became  of  Winona  ?  " 

"  She  was  a  good  deal  jarred  up  and  jolted :  but  she  got 
herself  together  and  disappeared  before  the  coroner  reached 
the  fatal  spot ;  and  't  is  said  she  sought  and  married  her  true 
love,  and  wandered  with  him  to  some  distant  clime,  where 
she  lived  happy  ever  after,  her  gentle  spirit  mellowed  and 
chastened  by  the  romantic  incident  which  had  so  early 
deprived  her  of  the  sweet  guidance  of  a  mother's  love  and 
a  father's  protecting  arm,  and  thrown  her,  all  unfriended, 
upon  the  cold  charity  of  a  censorious  world." 

I  was  glad  to  hear  the  lecturer's  description  of  the  scenery, 
for  it  assisted  my  appreciation  of  what  I  saw  of  it,  and  enabled 
me  to  imagine  such  of  it  as  we  lost  by  the  intrusion  of  night. 

As  the  lecturer  remarked,  this  whole  region  is  blanketed 
with  Indian  tales  and  traditions.  But  I  reminded  him  that 
people  usually  merely  mentioned  this  fact  —  doing  it  in  a 
way  to  make  a  body's  mouth  water — and  judiciously  stopped 
there.  Why  ?  Because  the  impression  left,  was  that  these 
tales  were  full  of  incident  and  imagination  —  a  pleasant 
impression  which  would  be  promptly  dissipated  if  the  tales 
were  told.  I  showed  him  a  lot  of  this  sort  of  literature 
which  I  had  been  collecting,  and  he  confessed  that  it  was 
poor  stuff,  exceedingly  sorry  rubbish ;  and  I  ventured  to  add 
that  the  legends  which  he  had  himself  told  us  were  of  this 
character,  with  the  single  exception  of  the  admirable  story 
of  Winona.  He  granted  these  facts,  but  said  that  if  I  would 
hunt  up  Mr.  Schoolcraft's  book,  published  near  fifty  years 
ago,  and  now  doubtless  out  of  print,  I  would  find  some  Indian 
inventions  in  it  that  were  very  far  from  being  barren  of  inci- 
dent and  imagination ;  that  the  tales  in  Hiawatha  were  of  this 


580  A  POETIC  LEGEND. 

sort,  and  they  came  from  Schoolcraft's  book ;  and  that  there 
were  others  in  the  same  book  which  Mr.  Longfellow  could 
have  turned  into  verse  with  good  effect.  For  instance,  there 
was  the  legend  of  "  The  Undying  Head."  He  could  not  tell 
it,  for  many  of  the  details  had  grown  dim  in  his  memory ; 
but  he  would  recommend  me  to  find  it  and  enlarge  my  respect 
for  the  Indian  imagination.  He  said  that  this  tale,  and  most 
of  the  others  in  the  book,  were  current  among  the  Indians 
along  this  part  of  the  Mississippi  when  he  first  came  here  ; 
and  that  the  contributors  to  Schoolcraft's  book  had  got  them 
directly  from  Indian  lips,  and  had  written  them  down  with 
strict  exactness,  and  without  embellishments  of  their  own. 

I  have  found  the  book.  The  lecturer  was  right.  There  are 
several  legends  in  it  which  confirm  what  he  said.  I  will  offer 
two  of  them — "The  Undying  Head,"  and  "  Peboan  and  Seeg- 
wun,  an  Allegory  of  the  Seasons."  The  latter  is  used  in  Hia- 
watha ;  but  it  is  worth  reading  in  the  original  form,  if  only 
that  one  may  see  how  effective  a  genuine  poem  can  be  without 
the  helps  and  graces  of  poetic  measure  and  rhythm  :  — 

PEBOAN   AND   SEEGWUN. 

An  old  man  was  sitting  alone  in  his  lodge,  by  the  side  of  a  frozen 
stream.  It  was  the  close  of  winter,  and  his  fire  was  almost  out. 
He  appeared  very  old  and  very  desolate.  His  locks  were  white 
with  age,  and  he  trembled  in  every  joint.  Day  after  day  passed  in 
solitude,  and  he  heard  nothing  but  the  sound  of  the  tempest,  sweep- 
ing before  it  the  new-fallen  snow. 

One  day,  as  his  fire  was  just  dying,  a  handsome  young  man 
approached  and  entered  his  dwelling.  His  cheeks  were  red  with 
the  blood  of  youth,  his  eyes  sparkled  with  animation,  and  a  smile 
played  upon  his  lips.  He  walked  with  a  light  and  quick  step.  His 
forehead  was  bound  with  a  wreath  of  sweet  grass,  in  place  of  a  war- 
rior's frontlet,  and  he  carried  a  bunch  of  flowers  in  his  hand. 

"  Ah,  my  son,"  said  the  old  man,  "  I  am  happy  to  see  you. 
Come  in.  Come  and  tell  me  of  your  adventures,  and  what  strange 
lands  you  have  been  to  see.     Let  us  pass  the  night  together.     I 


WEIED  AND   CURIOUS.  581 

will  tell  you  of  my  prowess  and  exploits,  and  what  I  can  perform. 
You  shall  do  the  same,  and  we  will  amuse  ourselves." 

He  then  drew  from  his  sack  a  curiously  wrought  antique  pipe, 
and  having  filled  it  with  tobacco,  rendered  mild  by  a  mixture  of 
certain  leaves,  handed  it  to  his  guest.  When  this  ceremony  was 
concluded  they  began  to  speak. 

"  I  blow  my  breath,"  said  the  old  man,  "  and  the  stream  stands 
still.     The  water  becomes  stiff  and  hard  as  clear  stone." 

"  I  breathe,"  said  the  young  man,  "  and  flowers  spring  up  over 
the  plain." 

"  I  shake  my  locks,"  retorted  the  old  man,  "  and  snow  covers  the 
land.  The  leaves  fall  from  the  trees  at  my  command,  and  my  breath 
blows  them  away.  The  birds  get  up  from  the  water,  and  fly  to  a 
distant  land.  The  animals  hide  themselves  from  my  breath,  and  the 
very  ground  becomes  as  hard  as  flint." 

"  I  shake  my  ringlets,"  rejoined  the  young  man,  "  and  warm 
showers  of  soft  rain  fall  upon  the  earth.  The  plants  lift  up  their 
heads  out  of  the  earth,  like  the  eyes  of  children  glistening  with 
delight.  My  voice  recalls  the  birds.  The  warmth  of  my  breath 
unlocks  the  streams.  Music  fills  the  groves  wherever  I  walk,  and 
all  nature  rejoices." 

At  length  the  sun  began  to  rise.  A  gentle  warmth  came  over 
the  place.  The  tongue  of  the  old  man  became  silent.  The  robin 
and  bluebird  began  to  sing  on  the  top  of  the  lodge.  The  stream 
began  to  murmur  by  the  door,  and  the  fragrance  of  growing  herbs 
and  flowers  came  softly  on  the  vernal  breeze. 

Daylight  fully  revealed  to  the  young  man  the  character  of  his 
entertainer.  When  he  looked  upon  him,  he  had  the  icy  visage  of 
Pehoan.1  Streams  began  to  flow  from  his  eyes.  As  the  sun 
increased,  he  grew  less  and  less  in  stature,  and  anon  had  melted 
completely  away.  Nothing  remained  on  the  place  of  his  lodge-fire 
but  the  miskodeed,2  a  small  white  flower,  with  a  pink  border,  which 
is  one  of  the  earliest  species  of  northern  plants. 

"  The  Undying  Head  "  is  a  rather  long  tale,  but  it  makes 
up  in  weird  conceits,  fairy-tale  prodigies,  variety  of  incident, 
and  energy  of  movement,  for  what  it  lacks  in  brevity.3 

1  Winter.  2  The  trailing  arbutus.  3  See  Appendix  D. 


CHAPTER   LX. 

SPECULATIONS  AND   CONCLUSIONS. 

WE  reached  St.  Paul,  at  the  head  of  navigation  of  the 
Mississippi,  and  there  our  voyage  of  two  thousand 
miles  from  New  Orleans  ended.     It  is  about  a  ten-day  trip 


by  steamer.  It  can  probably  be  done  quicker  by  rail.  I 
judge  so  because  I  know  that  one  may  go  by  rail  from  St. 
Louis  to  Hannibal  —  a  distance  of  at  least  a  hundred  and 


STARTLING  CONTRASTS.  583 

twenty  miles  —  in  seven  hours.  This  is  better  than  walking ; 
unless  one  is  in  a  hurry. 

The  season  being  far  advanced  when  we  were  in  New  Or- 
leans, the  roses  and  magnolia  blossoms  were  falling ;  but 
here  in  St.  Paul  it  was  the  snow.  In  New  Orleans  we  had 
caught  an  occasional  withering  breath  from  over  a  crater, 
apparently  ;  here  in  St.  Paul  we  caught  a  frequent  benumb- 
ing one  from  over  a  glacier,  apparently. 

I  am  not  trying  to  astonish  by  these  statistics.  No,  it  is 
only  natural  that  there  should  be  a  sharp  difference  between 
climates  which  lie  upon  parallels  of  latitude  which  are  one 
or  two  thousand  miles  apart.  I  take  this  position,  and  I 
will  hold  it  and  maintain  it  in  spite  of  the  newspapers.  The 
newspaper  thinks  it  is  n't  a  natural  thing ;  and  once  a  year, 
in  February,  it  remarks,  with  ill-concealed  exclamation  points, 
that  while  we,  away  up  here  are  fighting  snow  and  ice,  folks 
are  having  new  strawberries  and  peas  down  South  ;  callas 
are  blooming  out  of  doors,  and  the  people  are  complaining  of 
the  warm  weather.  The  newspaper  never  gets  done  being 
surprised  about  it.  It  is  caught  regularly  every  February. 
There  must  be  a  reason  for  this  ;  and  this  reason  must  be 
change  of  hands  at  the  editorial  desk.  You  cannot  surprise 
an  individual  more  than  twice  with  the  same  marvel  —  not 
even  with  the  February  miracles  of  the  Southern  climate  ; 
but  if  you  keep  putting  new  hands  at  the  editorial  desk  every 
year  or  two,  and  forget  to  vaccinate  them  against  the  annual 
climatic  surprise,  that  same  old  thing  is  going  to  occur  right 
along.  Each  year  one  new  hand  will  have  the  disease,  and 
be  safe  from  its  recurrence  ;  but  this  does  not  save  the  news- 
paper. No,  the  newspaper  is  in  as  bad  case  as  ever  ;  it  will 
forever  have  its  new  hand  ;  and  so,  it  will  break  out  with 
the  strawberry  surprise  every  February  as  long  as  it  livesr 
The  new  hand  is  curable  ;  the  newspaper  itself  is  incurable. 
An  act  of  Congress  —  no,  Congress  could  not  prohibit  the 
strawberry  surprise  without  questionably  stretching  its  pow- 
ers.   An  amendment  to  the  Constitution  might  fix  the  thing, 


584  ST.  PAUL  APPEARS. 

and  that  is  probably  the  best  and  quickest  way  to  get  at  it. 
Under  authority  of  such  an  amendment,  Congress  could  then 
pass  an  act  inflicting  imprisonment  for  life  for  the  first  of- 
fence, and  some  sort  of  lingering  death  for  subsequent  ones ; 
and  this,  no  doubt,  would  presently  give  us  a  rest.  At  the 
same  time,  the  amendment  and  the  resulting  act  and  penal- 
ties might  easily  be  made  to  cover  various  cognate  abuses, 
such  as  the  Annual-Veteran-who-has-Voted-for-Every-Presi- 
dent-  f  rom  -Washington  -do  wn,  -  and-Walked  -  to-the-Polls-Yes- 
terday-with-as-Bright-an-Eye-and-as-Firm-a-Step-as-Ever,  and 
ten  or  eleven  other  weary  yearly  marvels  of  that  sort,  and 
of  the  Oldest-Freemason,  and  Oldest-Printer,  and  Oldest- 
Baptist-Preacher,  and  Oldest-Alumnus  sort,  and  Three-Chil- 
dren-Born-at-a-Birth  sort,  and  so  on,  and  so  on.  And  then 
England  would  take  it  up  and  pass  a  law  prohibiting  the 
further  use  of  Sidney  Smith's  jokes,  and  appointing  a  com- 
missioner to  construct  some  new  ones.  Then  life  would  be 
a  sweet  dream  of  rest  and  peace,  and  the  nations  would 
cease  to  long  for  heaven. 

But  I  wander  from  my  theme.  St.  Paul  is  a  wonderful 
town.  It  is  put  together  in  solid  blocks  of  honest  brick  and 
stone,  and  has  the  air  of  intending  to  stay.  Its  post-office 
was  established  thirty-six  years  ago ;  and  by  and  by,  when 
the  postmaster  received  a  letter,  he  carried  it  to  Washington, 
horseback,  to  inquire  what  was  to  be  done  with  it.  Such  is 
the  legend.  Two  frame  houses  were  built  that  year,  and  sev- 
eral persons  were  added  to  the  population.  A  recent  number 
of  the  leading  St.  Paul  paper,  the  "  Pioneer  Press,"  gives  some 
statistics  which  furnish  a  vivid  contrast  to  that  old  state  of 
things,  to  wit :  Population,  autumn  of  the  present  year  (1882), 
71,000  ;  number  of  letters  handled,  first  half  of  the  year, 
1,209,387  ;  number  of  houses  built  during  three-quarters  of 
the  year,  989 ;  their  cost,  $3,186,000.  The  increase  of  let- 
ters over  the  corresponding  six  months  of  last  year  was  fifty 
per  cent.  Last  year  the  new  buildings  added  to  the  city  cost 
above  $4,500,000.     St.  Paul's  strength  lies  in  her  commerce 


THE   HIRED-GIRL'S  PALACES. 


585 


—  I  mean  his  commerce.  He  is  a  manufacturing  city,  of 
course  —  all  the  cities  of  that  region  are  —  but  he  is  peculi- 
arly strong  in  the  matter  of  commerce.  Last  year  his  job- 
bing trade  amounted  to  upwards  of  $52,000,000. 

He  has  a  custom-house,  and  is  building  a  costly 
capitol  to  replace  the  one  recently  burned — 
s  the  capital  of  the  State.  He 
churches  without  end  ;  and  not 
the  cheap  poor  kind,  but  the 
at  the  rich  Protestant 
up,  the  kind  that  the 
Dr  Irish  "hired-girl" 
elights  to  erect. 
What  a  passion  for 
building  majestic 
churches  the  Irish 
hired-girl  has. 
It  is  a  fine  thing 
for  our  archi- 
_:.  tecture ;  but 
p>  too  often  we 
"<  enjoy  her 
stately  fanes 
without  giv- 
ing her  a  grateful 
thought.  In  fact, 
instead  of  reflect- 
ing that  "  every  brick  and  every  stone  in  this  beautiful 
edifice  represents  an  ache  or  a  pain,  and  a  handful  of  sweat, 
and  hours  of  heavy  fatigue,  contributed  by  the  back  and 
forehead  and  bones  of  poverty,"  it  is  our  habit  to  forget  these 
things  entirely,  and  merely  glorify  the  mighty  temple  itself, 
without  vouchsafing  one  praiseful  thought  to  its  humble 
builder,  whose  rich  heart  and  withered  purse  it  symbolizes. 

This  is  a  land  of  libraries  and  schools.    St.  Paul  has  three 
public  libraries,  and   they  contain,  in  the  aggregate,  some 


AN  EARLY   POSTMASTER. 


586  A  SOLEMN  AND  BEAUTIFUL   THOUGHT. 

forty  thousand  books.  He  has  one  hundred  and  sixteen 
school-houses,  and  pays  out  more  than  seventy  thousand 
dollars  a  year  in  teachers'  salaries. 

There  is  an  unusually  fine  railway  station  ;  so  large  is  it, 
in  fact,  that  it  seemed  somewhat  overdone,  in  the  matter  of 
size,  at  first ;  but  at  the  end  of  a  few  months  it  was  perceived 
that  the  mistake  was  distinctly  the  other  way.  The  error  is 
to  be  corrected. 

The  town  stands  on  high  ground  ;  it  is  about  seven  hun- 
dred feet  above  the  sea  level.  It  is  so  high  that  a  wide  view 
of  river  and  lowland  is  offered  from  its  streets. 

It  is  a  very  wonderful  town  indeed,  and  is  not  finished 
yet.  All  the  streets  are  obstructed  with  building  material, 
and  this  is  being  compacted  into  houses  as  fast  as  possible, 
to  make  room  for  more  —  for  other  people  are  anxious  to 
build,  as  soon  as  they  can  get  the  use  of  the  streets  to  pile 
up  their  bricks  and  stuff  in. 

How  solemn  and  beautiful  is  the  thought,  that  the  earliest 
pioneer  of  civilization,  the  van-leader  of  civilization,  is  never 
the  steamboat,  never  the  railroad,  never  the  newspaper,  never 
the  Sabbath-school,  never  the  missionary  — but  always  whis- 
key !  Such  is  the  case.  Look  history  over  ;  you  will  see. 
The  missionary  comes  after  the  whiskey  —  I  mean  he  ar- 
rives after  the  whiskey  has  arrived ;  next  comes  the  poor 
immigrant,  with  axe  and  hoe  and  rifle  ;  next,  the  trader  ; 
next,  the  miscellaneous  rush  ;  next,  the  gambler,  the  despe- 
rado, the  highwayman,  and  all  their  kindred  in  sin  of  both 
sexes  ;  and  next,  the  smart  chap  who  has  bought  up  an  old 
grant  that  covers  all  the  land  ;  this  brings  the  lawyer  tribe  ; 
the  vigilance  committee  brings  the  undertaker.  All  these 
interests  bring  the  newspaper ;  the  newspaper  starts  up  poli- 
tics and  a  railroad  ;  all  hands  turn  to  and  build  a  church  and 
a  jail, —  and  behold,  civilization  is  established  forever  in  the 
land.  But  whiskey,  you  see,  was  the  van-leader  in  this 
beneficent  work.  It  always  is.  It  was  like  a  foreigner — and 
excusable  in  a  foreigner  —  to  be  ignorant  of  this  great  truth, 


EXTRAORDINARY   TOWNS. 


587 


and  wander  off  into  astronomy  to  borrow  a  symbol.     But  if 
he  had  been  conversant  with  the  facts,  he  would  have  said  

Westward  the  Jug  of  Empire  takes  its  way. 

This  great  van-leader  arrived  upon  the  ground  which  St. 
Paul  now  occupies,  in  June,  1837.  Yes,  at  that  date,  Pierre 
Parrant,  a  Canadian,  built  the  first  cabin,  uncorked  his  jug, 


THE   FIRST   ARRIVAL. 

and  began  to  sell  whiskey  to  the  Indians.  The  result  is  before 
us. 

All  that  I  have  said  of  the  newness,  briskness,  swift  pro- 
gress, wealth,  intelligence,  fine  and  substantial  architecture, 
and  general  slash  and  go,  and  energy  of  St.  Paul,  will  apply 
to  his  near  neighbor,  Minneapolis  —  with  the  addition  that 
the  latter  is  the  bigger  of  the  two  cities. 

These  extraordinary  towns  were  ten  miles  apart,  a  few 
months  ago,  but  were  growing  so  fast  that  they  may  possibly 
be  joined  now,  and  getting  along  under  a  single  mayor.  At 
any  rate,  within  five  years  from  now  there  will  be  at  least 
such  a  substantial  ligament  of  buildings  stretching  between 
them  and  uniting  them  that  a  stranger  will  not  be  able  to 


588 


MANY  MIGHTY   MILLS. 


tell  where  the  one  Siamese  twin  leaves  off  and  the  other 
begins.  Combined,  they  will  then  number  a  population  of 
two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand,  if  they  continue  to  grow  as 
they  are  now  growing.  Thus,  this  centre  of  population  at 
the  head  of  Mississippi  navigation,  will  then  begin  a  rivalry 
as  to  numbers,  with  that  centre  of  population  at  the  foot  of 
it  —  New  Orleans. 

Minneapolis  is  situated  at  the  falls  of  St.  Anthony,  which 
stretch  across  the  river,  fifteen  hundred  feet,  and  have  a  fall 


MINNEAPOLIS    AND   THE    FALLS   OE   ST.  ANTHONY. 


of  eighty-two  feet  —  a  waterpower  which,  by  art,  has  been 
made  of  inestimable  value,  business-wise,  though  somewhat 
to  the  damage  of  the  Falls  as  a  spectacle,  or  as  a  background 
against  which  to  get  your  photograph  taken. 

Thirty  flouring  mills  turn  out  two  million  barrels  of  the 
very  choicest  of  flour  every  year ;  twenty  sawmills  produce 


LIFTING  THE  FALLS.         •  589 

two  hundred  million  feet  of  lumber  annually ;  then  there  are 
woollen  mills,  cotton  mills,  paper  and  oil  mills ;  and  sash, 
nail,  furniture,  barrel,  and  other  factories,  without  number, 
so  to  speak.  The  great  flouring-mills  here  and  at  St.  Paul 
use  the  "  new  process  "  and  mash  the  wheat  by  rolling,  in- 
stead of  grinding  it. 

Sixteen  railroads  meet  in  Minneapolis,  and  sixty-five  pas- 
senger trains  arrive  and  depart  daily. 

In  this  place,  as  in  St.  Paul,  journalism  thrives.  Here  there 
are  three  great  dailies,  ten  weeklies,  and  three  monthlies. 

There  is  a  university,  with  four  hundred  students  —  and, 
better  still,  its  good  efforts  are  not  confined  to  enlightening 
the  one  sex.  There  are  sixteen  public  schools,  with  build- 
ings which  cost  $500,000  ;  there  are  six  thousand  pupils 
and  one  hundred  and  twenty-eight  teachers.  There  are 
also  seventy  churches  existing,  and  a  lot  more  projected. 
The  banks  aggregate  a  capital  of  $3,000,000,  and  the 
wholesale  jobbing  trade  of  the  town  amounts  to  $50,000,000 
a  year. 

Near  St.  Paul  and  Minneapolis  are  several  points  of  inter- 
est—  Fort  Snelling,  a  fortress  occupying  a  river-bluff  a  hun- 
dred feet  high ;  the  falls  of  Minnehaha ;  White-bear  Lake, 
and  so  forth.  The  beautiful  falls  of  Minnehaha  are  suffi- 
ciently celebrated — they  do  not  need  a  lift  from  me,  in  that 
direction.  The  .White-bear  Lake  is  less  known.  It  is  a 
lovely  sheet  of  water,  and  is  being  utilized  as  a  summer 
resort  by  the  wealth  and  fashion  of  the  State.  It  has  its 
club-house,  and  its  hotel,  with  the  modern  improvements  and 
conveniences ;  its  fine  summer  residences  ;  and  plenty  of 
fishing,  hunting,  and  pleasant  drives.  There  are  a  dozen 
minor  summer  resorts  around  about  St.  Paul  and  Minne- 
apolis, but  the  White-bear  Lake  is  the  resort.  Connected 
with  White-bear  Lake  is  a  most  idiotic  Indian  legend.  I 
would  resist  the  temptation  to  print  it  here,  if  I  could,  but 
the  task  is  beyond  my  strength.  The  guide-book  names  the 
preserver  of  the  legend,  and  compliments  his  "facile  pen." 


590  "        AN  IDIOTIC  LEGEND. 

Without  further  comment  or  delay  then,  let  us  turn  the  said 
facile  pen  loose  upon  the  reader :  — 


A   LEGEND   OF   WHITE-BEAR  LAKE. 

Every  spring,  for  perhaps  a  century,  or  as  long  as  there  has 
been  a  nation  of  red  men,  an  island  in  the  middle  of  White-bear 
Lake  has  been  visited  by  a  band  of  Indians  for  the  purpose  of 
making  maple  sugar. 

Tradition  says  that  many  springs  ago,  while  upon  this  island,  a 
young  warrior  loved  and  wooed  the  daughter  of  his  chief,  and  it  is 
said,  also,  the  maiden  loved  the  warrior.  He  had  again  and  again 
been  refused  her  hand  by  her  parents,  the  old  chief  alleging  that  he 
was  no  brave,  and  his  old  consort  called  him  a  woman ! 

The  sun  had  again  set  upon  the  "  sugar-bush,"  and  the  bright 
moon  rose  high  in  the  bright  blue  heavens,  when  the  young  warrior 
took  down  his  flute  and  went  out  alone,  once  more  to  sing  the  story 
of  his  love,  the  mild  breeze  gently  moved  the  two  gay  feathers  in 
his  head-dress,  and  as  he  mounted  on  the  trunk  of  a  leaning  tree, 
the  damp  snow  fell  from  his  feet  heavily.  As  he  raised  his  flute 
to  his  lips,  his  blanket  slipped  from  his  well-formed  shoulders,  and 
lay  partly  on  the  snow  beneath.  He  began  his  weird,  wild  love- 
song,  but  soon  felt  that  he  was  cold,  and  as  he  reached  back  for 
his  blanket,  some  unseen  hand  laid  it  gently  on  his  shoulders  ;  it 
was  the  hand  of  his  love,  his  guardian  angel.  She  took  her  place 
beside  him,  and  for  the  present  they  were  happy  ;  for  the  Indian 
has  a  heart  to  love,  and  in  this  pride  he  is  as  noble  as  in  his  own 
freedom,  which  makes  him  the  child  of  the  forest.  As  the  legend 
runs,  a  large  white-bear,  thinking,  perhaps,  that  polar  snows  and 
dismal  winter  weather  extended  everywhere,  took  up  his  journey 
southward.  He  at  length  approached  the  northern  shore  of  the 
lake  which  now  bears  his  name,  walked  down  the  bank  and  made 
his  way  noiselessly  through  the  deep  heavy  snow  toward  the  island. 
It  was  the  same  spring  ensuing  that  the  lovers  met.  They  had 
left  their  first  retreat,  and  were  now  seated  among  the  branches 
of  a  large  elm  which  hung  far  over  the  lake.  (The  same  tree 
is  still  standing,  and  excites  universal  curiosity  and  interest.)  For 
fear  of  being  detected,  they  talked  almost  in  a  whisper,  and  now, 


BEARS,  BLANKETS,  BELLES,  AND  BRAVES. 


591 


that  they  might  get 
back  to  camp  in  good 
time  and  thereby 
avoid  suspicion,  they 
were  just  rising  to 
return,  when  the 
maiden  uttered  a 
shriek  which  was 
heard  at  the  camp, 
and  bounding  toward 
the  young  brave,  she 
caught  his  blanket, 
but  missed  the  direc- 
tion of  her  foot  and 
fell,  bearing  the 
blanket  with  her  into 
the  great  arms  of  the 
ferocious  monster. 
Instantly  every  man, 
woman,  and  child  of 
the  band  were  upon 
the  bank,  but  all  un- 
armed. Cries  and 
wailiugs  went  up  from 
every  mouth.  What 
was  to  be  done  ?  In 
the  meantime  this 
white  and  savage 
beast  held  the  breath- 
less maiden  in  his 
huge  grasp,  and  fon- 
dled with  his  precious 
prey  as  if  he  were 
used  to  scenes  like 
this.  One  deafening 
yell  from  the  lover 
warrior  is  heard  above 

the  cries  of  hundreds  of  his  tribe,  and  dashing  away  to  his  wigwam 
he  grasps  his  faithful  knife,  returns  almost  at  a  single  bound  to  the 


THE    MIXTURE. 


592  A  CLIMAX  OF  ABSURDITIES. 

scene  of  fear  and  fright,  rushes  out  along  the  leaning  tree  to  the  spot 
where  his  treasure  fell,  and  springing  with  the  fury  of  a  mad  panther, 
pounced  upon  his  prey.  The  animal  turned,  and  with  one  stroke  of 
his  huge  paw  brought  the  lovers  heart  to  heart,  hut  the  next  moment 
the  warrior,  with  one  plunge  of  the  blade  of  his  knife,  opened  the 
crimson  sluices  of  death,  and  the  dying  bear  relaxed  his  hold. 

That  night  there  was  no  more  sleep  for  the  band  or  the  lovers, 
and  as  the  young  and  the  old  danced  about  the  carcass  of  the  dead 
monster,  the  gallant  warrior  was  presented  with  another  plume,  and 
ere  another  moon  had  set  he  had  a  living  treasure  added  to  his 
heart.  Their  children  for  many  years  played  upon  the  skin  of  the 
white-bear — from  which  the  lake  derives  its  name  — and  the  maiden 
and  the  brave  remembered  long  the  fearful  scene  and  rescue  that 
made  them  one,  for  Kis-se-me-pa  and  Ka-go-ka  could  never  forget 
their  fearful  encounter  with  the  huge  monster  that  came  so  near 
sending  them  to  the  happy  hunting-ground. 

It  is  a  perplexing  business.  First,  she  fell  down  out  of 
the  tree  —  she  and  the  blanket ;  and  the  bear  caught  her 
and  fondled  her  —  her  and  the  blanket ;  then  she  fell  up 
into  the  tree  again  —  leaving  the  blanket ;  meantime  the 
lover  goes  war-whooping  home  and  comes  back  "  heeled," 
climbs  the  tree,  jumps  down  on  the  bear,  the  girl  jumps 
down  after  him  —  apparently,  for  she  was  up  the  tree  — 
resumes  her  place  in  the  bear's  arms  along  with  the  blanket, 
the  lover  rams  his  knife  into  the  bear,  and  saves  —  whom, 
the  blanket  ?  No  —  nothing  of  the  sort.  You  get  yourself 
all  worked  up  and  excited  about  that  blanket,  and  then  all 
of  a  sudden,  just  when  a  happy  climax  seems  imminent,  you 
are  let  down  flat  —  nothing  saved  but  the  girl.  Whereas, 
one  is  not  interested  in  the  girl ;  she  is  not  the  prominent 
feature  of  the  legend.  Nevertheless,  there  you  are  left,  and 
there  you  must  remain ;  for  if  you  live  a  thousand  years  you 
will  never  know  who  got  the  blanket.  A  dead  man  could 
get  up  a  better  legend  than  this  one.  I  don't  mean  a  fresh 
dead  man  either ;  I  mean  a  man  that 's  been  dead  weeks  and 
weeks. 


HOME  AGAIN. 


593 


We  struck  the  home-trail  now,  and  in  a  few  hours  were 
in  that  astonishing  Chicago  —  a  city  where  they  are  always 
rubbing  the  lamp,  and  fetching  up  the  genii,  and  contriving 
and  achieving  new  impossibilities.  It  is  hopeless  for  the 
occasional  visitor  to  try  to  keep  up  with  Chicago  —  she  out- 
grows his  prophecies  faster  than  he  can  make  them.  She 
is  always  a  novelty ;  for  she  is  never  the  Chicago  you  saw 
when  you  passed  through  the  last  time.  The  Pennsylvania 
road  rushed  us  to  New  York  without  missing  schedule  time 
ten  minutes  anywhere  on  the  route  ;  and  there  ended  one 
of  the  most  enjoyable  five-thousand-mile  journeys  I  have 
ever  had  the  good  fortune  to  make. 


APPENDIX. 


A. 

[From  the  New-Orleans  Times. Democrat,  of  March  29, 1882.] 

VOYAGE  OF   THE   TIMES-DEMOCRAT'S   RELIEF   BOAT 
THROUGH   THE  INUNDATED   REGIONS. 

IT  was  nine  o'clock  Thursday  morning  when  the  "  Susie "  left 
the  Mississippi  and  entered  Old  River,  or  what  is  now  called  the 
mouth  of  the  Red.  Ascending  on  the  left,  a  flood  was  pouring  in 
through  and  over  the  levees  on  the  Chandler  plantation,  the  most 
northern  point  in  Pointe  Coupee  parish.  The  water  completely 
covered  the  place,  although  the  levees  had  given  way  but  a  short 
time  before.  The  stock  had  been  gathered  in  a  large  flat-boat, 
where,  without  food,  as  we  passed,  the  animals  were  huddled 
together,  waiting  for  a % boat  to  tow  them  off.  On  the  right-hand 
side  of  the  river  is  Turnbull's  Island,  and  on  it  is  a  large  plantation 
which  formerly  was  pronounced  one  of  the  most  fertile  in  the  State. 
The  water  has  hitherto  allowed  it  to  go  scot-free  in  usual  floods,  but 
now  broad  sheets  of  water  told  only  where  fields  were.  The  top  of 
the  protecting  levee  could  be  seen  here  and  there,  but  nearly  all  of 
it  was  submerged. 

The  trees  have  put  on  a  greener  foliage  since  the  water  has 
poured  in,  and  the  woods  look  bright  and  fresh,  but  this  pleasant 
aspect  to  the  eye  is  neutralized  by  the  interminable  waste  of  water. 
We  pass  mile  after  mile,  and  it  is  nothing  but  trees  standing  up  to 
their  branches  in  water.  A  water-turkey  now  and  again  rises  and 
flies  ahead  into  the  long  avenue  of  silence.  A  pirogue  sometimes 
flits  from  the  bushes  and  crosses  the  Red  River  on  its  way  out  to 


596  APPENDIX  A. 

the  Mississippi,  but  the  sad-faced  paddlers  never  turn  their  heads  to 
look  at  our  boat.  The  puffing  of  the  boat  is  music  in  this  gloom, 
which  affects  one  most  curiously.  It  is  not  the  gloom  of  deep 
forests  or  dark  caverns,  but  a  peculiar  kind  of  solemn  silence 
and  impressive  awe  that  holds  one  perforce  to  its  recognition. 
We  passed  two  negro  families  on  a  raft  tied  up  in  the  willows 
this  morning.  They  were  evidently  of  the  well-to-do  class,  as 
they  had  a  supply  of  meal  and  three  or  four  hogs  with  them. 
Their  rafts  were  about  twenty  feet  square,  and  in  front  of  an 
improvised  shelter  earth  had  been  placed,  on  which  they  built  their 
fire. 

The  current  running  down  the  Atchafalaya  was  very  swift,  the 
Mississippi  showing  a  predilection  in  that  direction,  which  needs 
only  to  be  seen  to  enforce  the  opinion  of  that  river's  desperate 
endeavors  to  find  a  short  way  to  the  Gulf.  Small  boats,  skiffs, 
pirogues,  etc.,  are  in  great  demand,  and  many  have  been  stolen  by 
piratical  negroes,  who  take  them  where  they  will  bring  the  greatest 
price.  From  what  was  told  me  by  Mr.  C.  P.  Ferguson,  a  planter 
near  Red  River  Landing,  whose  place  has  just  gone  under,  there  is 
much  suffering  in  the  rear  of  that  place.  The  negroes  had  given 
up  all  thoughts  of  a  crevasse  there,  as  the  upper  levee  had  stood  so 
long,  and  when  it  did  come  they  were  at  its  mercy.  On  Thursday 
a  number  were  taken  out  of  trees  and  off  of  cabin  roofs  and  brought 
in,  many  yet  remaining. 

One  does  not  appreciate  the  sight  of  earth  until  he  has  travelled 
through  a  flood.  At  sea  one  does  not  expect  or  look  for  it,  but 
here,  with  fluttering  leaves,  shadowy  forest  aisles,  house-tops  barely 
visible,  it  is  expected.  In  fact  a  grave-yard,  if  the  mounds  were 
above  water,  would  be  appreciated.  The  river  here  is  known  only 
because  there  is  an  opening  in  the  trees,  and  that  is  all.  It  is 
in  width,  from  Fort  Adams  on  the  left  bank  of  the  Mississippi  to 
the  bank  of  Rapides  Parish,  a  distance  of  about  sixty  miles.  A 
large  portion  of  this  was  under  cultivation,  particularly  along  the 
Mississippi  and  back  of  the  Red.  When  Red  River  proper  was 
entered,  a  strong  current  was  running  directly  across  it,  pursuing  the 
same  direction  as  that  of  the  Mississippi. 

After  a  run  of  some  hours,  Black  River  was  reached.  Hardly 
was  it  entered  before  signs  of  suffering  became  visible.  All  the  wil- 
lows along  the  banks  were  stripped  of  their  leaves.    One  man,  whom 


APPENDIX  A.  597 

your  correspondent  spoke  to,  said  that  he  had  had  one  hundred  and 
fifty  head  of  cattle  and  one  hundred  head  of  hogs.  At  the  first  ap- 
pearance of  water  he  had  started  to  drive  them  to  the  high  lands  of 
Avoyelles,  thirty-five  miles  off,  but  he  lost  fifty  head  of  the  beef 
cattle  and  sixty  hogs.  Black  River  is  quite  picturesque,  even  if  its 
shores  are  under  water.  A  dense  growth  of  ash,  oak,  gum,  and  hick- 
ory make  the  shores  almost  impenetrable,  and  where  one  can  get  a 
view  down  some  avenue  in  the  trees,  only  the  dim  outlines  of  distant 
trunks  can  be  barely  distinguished  in  the  gloom. 

A  few  miles  up  this  river,  the  depth  of  water  on  the  banks  was 
fully  eight  feet,  and  on  all  sides  could  be  seen,  still  holding  against 
the  strong  current,  the  tops  of  cabins.  Here  and  there  one  over- 
turned was  surrounded  by  drift-wood,  forming  the  nucleus  of  pos- 
sibly some  future  island. 

In  order  to  save  coal,  as  it  was  impossible  to  get  that  fuel  at  any 
point  to  be  touched  during  the  expedition,  a  lookout  was  kept  for  a 
wood-pile.  On  rounding  a  point  a  pirogue,  skilfully  paddled  by  a 
youth,  shot  out,  and  in  its  bow  was  a  girl  of  fifteen,  of  fair  face, 
beautiful  black  eyes,  and  demure  manners.  The  boy  asked  for  a 
paper,  which  was  thrown  to  him,  and  the  couple  pushed  their  tiny 
craft  out  into  the  swell  of  the  boat. 

Presently  a  little  girl,  not  certainly  over  twelve  years,  paddled 
out  in  the  smallest  little  canoe  and  handled  it  with  all  the  deftness  of 
an  old  voyageur.  The  little  one  looked  more  like  an  Indian  than  a 
white  child,  and  laughed  when  asked  if  she  were  afraid.  She  had 
been  raised  in  a  pirogue  and  could  go  anywhere.  She  was  bound 
out  to  pick  willow  leaves  for  the  stock,  and  she  pointed  to  a  house 
near  by  with  water  three  inches  deep  on  the  floors.  At  its  back 
door  was  moored  a  raft  about  thirty  feet  square,  with  a  sort  of  fence 
built  upon  it,  and  inside  of  this  some  sixteen  cows  and  twenty  hogs 
were  standing.  The  family  did  not  complain,  except  on  account 
of  losing  their  stock,  and  promptly  brought  a  supply  of  wood  in  a 
flat. 

From  this  point  to  the  Mississippi  River,  fifteen  miles,  there  is 
not  a  spot  of  earth  above  water,  and  to  the  westward  for  thirty-five 
miles  there  is  nothing  but  the  river's  flood.  Black  River  had  risen 
during  Thursday,  the  23d,  If  inches,  and  was  going  up  at  night  still. 
As  we  progress  up  the  river  habitations  become  more  frequent,  but 
are  yet  still  miles  apart.    Nearly  all  of  them  are  deserted,  and  the 


598  APPENDIX   A. 

out-houses  floated  off.  To  add  to  the  gloom,  almost  every  living 
thing  seems  to  have  departed,  and  not  a  whistle  of  a  bird  nor  the 
bark  of  the  squirrel  can  be  heard  in  this  solitude.  Sometimes  a 
morose  gar  will  throw  his  tail  aloft  and  disappear  in  the  river,  but 
beyond  this  everything  is  quiet  —  the  quiet  of  dissolution.  Down  the 
river  floats  now  a  neatly  whitewashed  hen-house,  then  a  cluster  of 
neatly  split  fence-rails,  or  a  door  and  a  bloated  carcass, .  solemnly 
guarded  by  a  pair  of  buzzards,  the  only  bird  to  be  seen,  which  feast 
on  the  carcass  as  it  bears  them  along.  A  picture-frame  in  which 
there  was  a  cheap  lithograph  of  a  soldier  on  horseback,  as  it  floated 
on  told  of  some  hearth  invaded  by  the  water  and  despoiled  of  this 
ornament. 

At  dark,  as  it  was  not  prudent  to  run,  a  place  alongside  the 
woods  was  hunted  and  to  a  tall  gum-tree  the  boat  was  made  fast  for 
the  night. 

A  pretty  quarter  of  the  moon  threw  a  pleasant  light  over  forest 
and  river,  making  a  picture  that  would  be  a  delightful  piece  of  land- 
scape study,  could  an  artist  only  hold  it  down  to  his  canvas.  The 
motion  of  the  engines  had  ceased,  the  puffing  of  the  escaping  steam 
was  stilled,  and  the  enveloping  silence  closed  upon  us,  and  such 
silence  it  was !  *  Usually  in  a  forest  at  night  one  can  hear  the  piping 
of  frogs,  the  hum  of  insects,  or  the  dropping  of  limbs  ;  but  here  nature 
was  dumb.  The  dark  recesses,  those  aisles  into  this  cathedral,  gave 
forth  no  sound,  and  even  the  ripplings  of  the  current  die  away. 

At  daylight  Friday  morning  all  hands  were  up,  and  up  the  Black 
we  started.  The  morning  was  a  beautiful  one,  and  the  river,  which 
is  remarkably  straight,  put  on  its  loveliest  garb.  The  blossoms 
of  the  haw  perfumed  the  air  deliciously,  and  a  few  birds  whistled 
blithely  along  the  banks.  The  trees  were  larger,  and  the  forest 
seemed  of  older  growth  than  below.  More  fields  were  passed  than 
nearer  the  mouth,  but  the  same  scene  presented  itself  —  smoke- 
houses drifting  out  in  the  pastures,  negro  quarters  anchored  in  con- 
fusion against  some  oak,  and  the  modest  residence  just  showing  its 
eaves  above  water.  The  sun  came  up  in  a  glory  of  carmine,  and 
the  trees  were  brilliant  in  their  varied  shades  of  green.  Not  a  foot 
of  soil  is  to  be  seen  anywhere,  and  the  water  is  apparently  growing 
deeper  and  deeper,  for  it  reaches  up  to  the  branches  of  the  largest 
trees.  All  along,  the  bordering  willows  have  been  denuded  of  leaves, 
showing  how  long  the  people  have  been  at  work  gathering  this  fod- 


APPENDIX  A.  599 

der  for  their  animals.  An  old  man  in  a  pirogue  was  asked  how  the 
willow  leaves  agreed  with  his  cattle.  He  stopped  in  his  work,  and 
with  an  ominous  shake  of  his  head  replied :  "  Well,  sir,  it 's  enough 
to  keep  warmth  in  their  bodies  and  that 's  all  we  expect,  but  it 's 
hard  on  the  hogs,  particularly  the  small  ones.  They  is  dropping  off 
powerful  fast.     But  what  can  you  do  ?     It 's  all  we  've  got." 

At  thirty  miles  above  the  mouth  of  Black  River  the  water 
extends  from  Natchez  on  the  Mississippi  across  to  the  pine  hills 
of  Louisiana,  a  distance  of  seventy-three  miles,  and  there  is  hardly 
a  spot  that  is  not  ten  feet  under  it.  The  tendency  of  the  current 
up  the  Black  is  toward  the  west.  In  fact,  so  much  is  this  the  case, 
the  waters  of  Red  River  have  been  driven  down  from  toward  the 
Calcasieu  country,  and  the  waters  of  the  Black  enter  the  Red  some 
fifteen  miles  above  the  mouth  of  the  former,  a  thing  never  before 
seen  by  even  the  oldest  steamboatmen.  The  water  now  in  sight  of 
us  is  entirely  from  the  Mississippi. 

Up  to  Trinity,  or  rather  Troy,  which  is  but  a  short  distance 
below,  the  people  have  nearly  all  moved  out,  those  remaining  hav- 
ing enough  for  their  present  personal  needs.  Their  cattle,  though, 
are  suffering  and  dying  off  quite  fast,  as  the  confinement  on  rafts 
and  the  food  they  get  breeds  disease. 

After  a  short  stop  we  started,  and  soon  came  to  a  section  where 
there  were  many  open  fields  and  cabins  thickly  scattered  about. 
Here  were  seen  more  pictures  of  distress.  On  the  inside  of  the 
houses  the  inmates  had  built  on  boxes  a  scaffold  on  which  they 
placed  the  furniture.  The  bed-posts  were  sawed  off  on  top,  as  the 
ceiling  was  not  more  than  four  feet  from  the  improvised  floor.  The 
buildings  looked  very  insecure,  and  threaten  every  moment  to  float 
off.  Near  the  houses  were  cattle  standing  breast  high  in  the  water, 
perfectly  impassive.  They  did  not  move  in  their  places,  but  stood 
patiently  waiting  for  help  to  come.  The  sight  was  a  distressing  one, 
and  the  poor  creatures  will  be  sure  to  die  unless  speedily  rescued. 
Cattle  differ  from  horses  in  this  peculiar  quality.  A  horse,  after  find- 
ing no  relief  comes,  will  swim  off  in  search  of  food,  whereas  a  beef 
will  stand  in  its  tracks  until  with  exhaustion  it  drops  in  the  water 
and  drowns. 

At  half-past  twelve  o'clock  a  hail  was  given  from  a  flat-boat 
inside  the  line  of  the  bank.  Rounding  to  we  ran  alongside,  and 
General  York  stepped  aboard.    He  was  just  then  engaged  in  getting 


600  APPENDIX  A. 

off  stock,  and  welcomed  the  "  Times-Democrat  Boat "  heartily,  as 
he  said  there  was  much  need  for  her.  He  said  that  the  distress  was 
not  exaggerated  in  the  least.  People  were  in  a  condition  it  was  dif- 
ficult even  for  one  to  imagine.  The  water  was  so  high  there  was 
great  danger  of  their  houses  being  swept  away.  It  had  already  risen 
so  high  that  it  was  approaching  the  eaves,  and  when  it  reaches  this 
point  there  is  always  imminent  risk  of  their  being  swept  away.  If 
this  occurs,  there  will  be  great  loss  of  life.  The  General  spoke  of 
the  gallant  work  of  many  of  the  people  in  their  attempts  to  save 
their  stock,  but  thought  that  fully  twenty-five  per  cent  had  perished. 
Already  twenty-five  hundred  people  had  received  rations  from  Troy, 
on  Black  River,  and  he  had  towed  out  a  great  many  cattle,  but  a 
very  great  quantity  remained  and  were  in  dire  need.  The  water  was 
now  eighteen  inches  higher  than  in  1874,  and  there  was  no  land 
between  Vidalia  and  the  hills  of  Catahoula. 

At  two  o'clock  the  "  Susie  "  reached  Troy,  sixty-five  miles  above 
the  mouth  of  Black  River.  Here  on  the  left  comes  in  Little  River; 
just  beyond  that  the  Ouachita,  and  on  the  right  the  Tensas.  These 
three  rivers  form  the  Black  River.  Troy,  or  a  portion  of  it,  is 
situated  on  and  around  three  large  Indian  mounds,  circular  in 
shape,  which  rise  above  the  present  water  about  twelve  feet.  They 
are  about  one  hundred  and  fifty  feet  in  diameter  and  are  about 
two  hundred  yards  apart.  The  houses  are  all  built  between  these 
mounds,  and  hence  are  all  flooded  to  a  depth  of  eighteen  inches  on 
their  floors. 

These  elevations,  built  by  the  aborigines  hundreds  of  years  ago, 
are  the  only  points  of  refuge  for  miles.  When  we  arrived  we  found 
them  crowded  with  stock,  all  of  which  was  thin  and  hardly  able  to 
stand  up.  They  were  mixed  together,  sheep,  hogs,  horses,  mules, 
and  cattle.  One  of  these  mounds  has  been  used  for  many  years  as 
the  grave-yard,  and  to-day  we  saw  attenuated  cows  lying  against  the 
marble  tomb-stones,  chewing  their  cud  in  contentment,  after  a  meal 
of  corn  furnished  by  General  York.  Here,  as  below,  the  remark- 
able skill  of  the  women  and  girls  in  the  management  of  the  smaller 
pirogues  was  noticed.  Children  were  paddling  about  in  these  most 
ticklish  crafts  with  all  the  nonchalance  of  adepts. 

General  York  has  put  into  operation  a  perfect  system  in  regard  to 
furnishing  relief.  He  makes  a  personal  inspection  of  the  place  where 
it  is  asked,  sees  what  is  necessary  to  be  done,  and  then,  having  two 


APPENDIX  A,  601 

boats  chartered,  with  flats,  sends  them  promptly  to  the  place,  when 
the  cattle  are  loaded  and  towed  to  the  pine  hills  and  uplands  of 
Catahoula.  He  has  made  Troy  his  headquarters,  and  to  this  point 
boats  come  for  their  supply  of  feed  for  cattle.  On  the  opposite  side 
of  Little  River,  which  branches  to  the  left  out  of  Black,  and  between 
it  and  the  Ouachita,  is  situated  the  town  of  Trinity,  which  is  hourly 
threatened  with  destruction.  It  is  much  lower  than  Troy,  and  the 
water  is  eight  and  nine  feet  deep  in  the  houses.  A  strong  current 
sweeps  through  it,  and  it  is  remarkable  that  all  of  its  houses  have 
not  gone  before.  The  residents  of  both  Troy  and  Trinity  have 
been  cared  for,  yet  some  of  their  stock  have  to  be  furnished  with 
food. 

As  soon  as  the  "  Susie  "  reached  Troy,  she  was  turned  over  to 
General  York  and  placed  at  his  disposition  to  carry  out  the  work  of 
relief  more  rapidly.  Nearly  all  her  supplies  were  landed  on  one 
of  the  mounds  to  lighten  her,  and  she  was  headed  down  stream  to 
relieve  those  below.  At  Tom  Hooper's  place,  a  few  miles  from 
Troy,  a  large  flat,  with  about  fifty  head  of  stock  on  board,  was  taken 
in  tow.  The  animals  were  fed,  and  soon  regained  some  strength. 
To-day  we  go  on  Little  River,  where  the  suffering  is  greatest. 


DOWN  BLACK  RIVER. 

Saturday  Evening,  March  25. 

We  started  down  Black  River  quite  early,  under  the  direction  of 
General  York,  to  bring  out  what  stock  could  be  reached.  Going 
down  river  a  flat  in  tow  was  left  in  a  central  locality,  and  from  there 
men  poled  her  back  in  the  rear  of  plantations,  picking  up  the 
animals  wherever  found.  In  the  loft  of  a  gin-house  there  were 
seventeen  head  found,  and  after  a  gangway  was  built  they  were  led 
down  into  the  flat  without  difficulty.  Taking  a  skiff  with  the  Gen- 
eral, your  reporter  was  pulled  up  to  a  little  house  of  two  rooms, 
in  which  the  water  was  standing  two  feet  on  the  floors.  In  one  of 
the  large  rooms  were  huddled  the  horses  and  cows  of  the  place, 
while  in  the  other  the  Widow  Taylor  and  her  son  were  seated  on  a 
scaffold  raised  on  the  floor.  One  or  two  dug-outs  were  drifting 
about  in  the  room  ready  to  be  put  in  service  at  any  time.     When 


602  APPENDIX  A. 

the  flat  was  brought  up,  the  side  of  the  house  was  cut  away  as  the 
only  means  of  getting  the  animals  out,  and  the  cattle  were  driven  on 
board  the  boat.  General  York,  in  this  as  in  every  case,  inquired  if 
the  family  desired  to  leave,  informing  them  that  Major  Burke,  of 
"  The  Times-Democrat,"  has  sent  the  "  Susie  "  up  for  that  purpose. 
Mrs.  Taylor  said  she  thanked  Major  Burke,  but  she  would  try  and 
hold  out.  The  remarkable  tenacity  of  the  people  here  to  their 
homes  is  beyond  all  comprehension.  Just  below,  at  a  point  sixteen 
miles  from  Troy,  information  was  received  that  the  house  of  Mr. 
Tom  Ellis  was  in  danger,  and  his  family  were  all  in  it.  We  steamed 
there  immediately,  and  a  sad  picture  was  presented.  Looking  out  of 
the  half  of  the  window  left  above  water  was  Mrs.  Ellis,  who  is  in 
feeble  health,  whilst  at  the  door  were  her  seven  children,  the  oldest 
not  fourteen  years.  One  side  of  the  house  was  given  up  to  the  work 
animals,  some  twelve  head,  besides  hogs.  In  the  next  room  the 
family  lived,  the  water  coming  within  two  inches  of  the  bed-rail. 
The  stove  was  below  water,  and  the  cooking  was  done  on  a  fire  on 
top  of  it.  The  house  threatened  to  give  way  at  any  moment :  one 
end  of  it  was  sinking,  and,  in  fact,  the  building  looked  a  mere  shell. 
As  the  boat  rounded  to,  Mr.  Ellis  came  out  in  a  dug-out,  and  General 
York  told  him  that  he  had  come  to  his  relief ;  that  "  The  Times- 
Democrat  "  boat  was  at  his  service,  and  would  remove  his  family  at 
once  to  the  hills,  and  on  Monday  a  flat  would  take  out  his  stock,  as, 
until  that  time,  they  would  be  busy.  Notwithstanding  the  deplorable 
situation  himself  and  family  were  in,  Mr.  Ellis  did  not  want  to  leave. 
He  said  he  thought  he  would  wait  until  Monday,  and  take  the  risk 
of  his  house  falling.  The  children  around  the  door  looked  perfectly 
contented,  seeming  to  care  little  for  the  danger  they  were  in.  These 
are  but  two  instances  of  the  many.  After  weeks  of  privation  and 
suffering,  people  still  cling  to  their  houses  and  leave  only  when  there 
is  not  room  between  the  water  and  the  ceiling  to  build  a  scaffold  on 
which  to  stand.  It  seemed  to  be  incomprehensible,  yet  the  love  for 
the  old  place  was  stronger  than  that  for  safety. 

After  leaving  the  Ellis  place,  the  next  spot  touched  at  was  the 
Oswald  place.  Here  the  flat  was  towed  alongside  the  gin-house 
where  there  were  fifteen  head  standing  in  water ;  and  yet,  as  they 
stood  on  scaffolds,  their  heads  were  above  the  top  of  the  entrance. 
It  was  found  impossible  to  get  them  out  without  cutting  away  a  por- 
tion of  the  front ;  and  so  axes  were  brought  into  requisition  and  a 


APPENDIX  A.  603 

gap  made.     After  much  labor  the  horses  and  mules  were  securely 
placed  on  the  flat. 

At  each  place  we  stop  there  are  always  three,  four,  or  more  dug- 
outs arriving,  bringing  information  of  stock  in  other  places  in  need. 
Notwithstanding  the  fact  that  a  great  many  had  driven  a  part  of 
their  stock  to  the  hills  some  time  ago,  there  yet  remains  a  large 
quantity,  which  General  York,  who  is  working  with  indomitable 
energy,  will  get  landed  in  the  pine  hills  by  Tuesday. 

All  along  Black  River  the  "  Susie  "  has  been  visited  by  scores  of 
planters,  whose  tales  are  the  repetition  of  those  already  heard  of 
suffering  and  loss.  An  old  planter,  who  has  lived  on  the  river  since 
1844,  said  there  never  was  such  a  rise,  and  he  was  satisfied  more 
than  one  quarter  of  the  stock  has  been  lost.  Luckily  the  people 
cared  first  for  their  work  stock,  and  when  they  could  find  it  horses 
and  mules  were  housed  in  a  place  of  safety.  The  rise  which  still 
continues,  and  was  two  inches  last  night,  compels  them  to  get  them 
out  to  the  hills ;  hence  it  is  that  the  work  of  General  York  is 
of  such  a  great  value.  From  daylight  to  late  at  night  he  is  going 
this  way  and  that,  cheering  by  his  kindly  words  and  directing  with 
calm  judgment  what  is  to  be  done.  One  unpleasant  story,  of  a  cer- 
tain merchant  in  New  Orleans,  is  told  all  along  the  river.  It  ap- 
pears for  some  years  past  the  planters  have  been  dealing  with  this 
individual,  and  many  of  them  had  balances  in  his  hands.  When 
the  overflow  came  they  wrote  for  coffee,  for  meal,  and,  in  fact,  for 
such  little  necessities  as  were  required.  No  response  to  these  letters 
came,  and  others  were  written,  and  yet  these  old  customers,  with 
plantations  under  water,  were  refused  even  what  was  necessary  to 
sustain  life.  It  is  needless  to  say  he  is  not  popular  now  on  Black 
River. 

The  hills  spoken  of  as  the  place  of  refuge  for  the  people  and 
stock  on  Black  River  are  in  Catahoula  parish,  twenty-four  miles 
from  Black  River. 

After  filling  the  flat  with  cattle  we  took  on  board  the  family  of 
T.  S.  Hooper,  seven  in  number,  who  could  not  longer  remain  in 
their  dwelling,  and  we  are  now  taking  them  up  Little  River  to  the 
hills. 


604  APPENDIX  A. 


THE  FLOOD   STILL   RISING. 

Trot,  March  27,  1882,  noon. 

The  flood  here  is  rising  about  three  and  a  half  inches  every 
twenty-four  hours,  and  rains  have  set  in  which  will  increase  this. 
General  York  feels  now  that  our  efforts  ought  to  be  directed  to- 
wards saving  life,  as  the  increase  of  the  water  has  jeopardized  many 
houses.  We  intend  to  go  up  the  Tensas  in  a  few  minutes,  and  then 
we  will  return  and  go  down  Black  River  to  take  off  families.  There 
is  a  lack  of  steam  transportation  here  to  meet  the  emergency.  The 
General  has  three  boats  chartered,  with  flats  in  tow,  but  the  demand 
for  these  to  tow  out  stock  is  greater  than  they  can  meet  with  prompt- 
ness. All  are  working  night  and  day,  and  the  "  Susie  "  hardly  stops 
for  more  than  an  hour  anywhere.  The  rise  has  placed  Trinity  in  a 
dangerous  plight,  and  momentarily  it  is  expected  that  some  of  the 
houses  will  float  off.  Troy  is  a  little  higher,  yet  all  are  in  the  water. 
Reports  have  come  in  that  a  woman  and  child  have  been  washed 
away  below  here,  and  two  cabins  floated  off.  Their  occupants  are 
the  same  who  refused  to  come  off  day  before  yesterday.  One  would 
not  believe  the  utter  passiveness  of  the  people. 

As  yet  no  news  has  been  received  of  the  steamer  "  Delia,"  which 
is  supposed  to  be  the  one  sunk  in  yesterday's  storm  on  Lake  Cata- 
houla. She  is  due  here  now,  but  has  not  arrived.  Even  the  mail 
here  is  most  uncertain,  and  this  I  send  by  skiff  to  Natchez  to  get  it 
to  you.  It  is  impossible  to  get  accurate  data  as  to  past  crops,  etc., 
as  those  who  know  much  about  the  matter  have  gone,  and  those 
who  remain  are  not  well  versed  in  the  production  of  this  section. 

General  York  desires  me  to  say  that  the  amount  of  rations  for- 
merly sent  should  be  duplicated  and  sent  at  once.  It  is  impossible 
to  make  any  estimate,  for  the  people  are  fleeing  to  the  hills,  so  rapid 
is  the  rise.  The  residents  here  are  in  a  state  of  commotion  that  can 
only  be  appreciated  when  seen,  and  complete  demoralization  has 
set  in. 

If  rations  are  drawn  for  any  particular  section  hereabouts,  they 
would  not  be  certain  to  be  distributed,  so  everything  should  be  sent 
to  Troy  as  a  centre,  and  the  General  will  have  it  properly  disposed 
of.  He  has  sent  for  one  hundred  tents,  and,  if  all  go  to  the  hills  who 
are  in  motion  now,  two  hundred  will  be  required. 


APPENDIX  B.  605 


B. 

The  condition  of  this  rich  valley  of  the  Lower  Mississippi,  imme- 
diately after  and  since  the  war,  constituted  one  of  the  disastrous 
effects  of  war  most  to  be  deplored.  Fictitious  property  in  slaves 
was  not  only  righteously  destroyed,  but  very  much  of  the  work 
which  had  depended  upon  the  slave  labor  was  also  destroyed  or 
greatly  impaired,  especially  the  levee  system. 

It  might  have  been  expected  by  those  who  have  not  investigated 
the  subject,  that  such  important  improvements  as  the  construction 
and  maintenance  of  the  levees  would  have  been  assumed  at  once  by 
the  several  States.  But  what  can  the  State  do  where  the  people 
are  under  subjection  to  rates  of  interest  ranging  from  18  to  30  per 
cent,  and  are  also  under  the  necessity  of  pledging  their  crops  in 
advance  even  of  planting,  at  these  rates,  for  the  privilege  of  pur- 
chasing all  of  their  supplies  at  100  per  cent  profit? 

It  has  needed  but  little  attention  to  make  it  perfectly  obvious  that 
the  control  of  the  Mississippi  River,  if  undertaken  at  all,  must  be 
undertaken  by  the  national  government,  and  cannot  be  compassed 
by  States.  The  river  must  be  treated  as  a  unit ;  its  control  cannot 
be  compassed  under  a  divided  or  separate  system  of  administration. 

Neither  are  the  States  especially  interested  competent  to  combine 
among  themselves  for  the  necessary  operations.  The  work  must 
begin  far  up  the  river ;  at  least  as  far  as  Cairo,  if  not  beyond ;  and 
must  be  conducted  upon  a  consistent  general  plan  throughout  the 
course  of  the  river. 

It  does  not  need  technical  or  scientific  knowledge  to  comprehend 
the  elements  of  the  case  if  one  will  give  a  little  time  and  attention  to 
the  subject,  and  when  a  Mississippi  River  commission  has  been  con- 
stituted, as  the  existing  commission  is,  of  thoroughly  able  men  of 
different  walks  in  life,  may  it  not  be  suggested  that  their  verdict  in 
the  case  should  be  accepted  as  conclusive,  so  far  as  any  a  priori  the- 
ory of  construction  or  control  can  be  considered  conclusive  ? 

It  should  be  remembered  that  upon  this  board  are  General  Gil- 
more,  General  Comstock,  and  General  Suter,  of  the  United  States 
Engineers  ;  Professor  Henry  Mitchell  (the  most  competent  author- 
ity on  the  question  of  hydrography),  of  the  United  States  Coast 


606  APPENDIX  B. 

Survey  ;  B.  B.  Harrod,  the  State  Engineer  of  Louisiana ;  Jas.  B. 
Eacls,  whose  success  with  the  jetties  at  New  Orleans  is  a  warrant  of 
his  competency,  and  Judge  Taylor,  of  Indiana. 

It  would  be  presumption  on  the  part  of  any  single  man,  however 
skilled,  to  contest  the  judgment  of  such  a  board  as  this. 

The  method  of  improvement  proposed  by  the  commission  is  at 
once  in  accord  with  the  results  of  engineering  experience  and  with 
observations  of  nature  where  meeting  our  wants.  As  in  nature  the 
growth  of  trees  and  their  proneness  where  undermined  to  fall  across 
the  slope  and  support  the  bank  secures  at  some  points  a  fair  depth  of 
channel  and  some  degree  of  permanence,  so  in  the  project  of  the 
engineer  the  use  of  timber  and  brush  and  the  encouragement  of  for- 
est growth  are  the  main  features.  It  is  proposed  to  reduce  the 
width  where  excessive  by  brushwood  dykes,  at  first  low,  but  raised 
higher  and  higher  as  the  mud  of  the  river  settles  under  their  shelter, 
and  finally  slope  them  back  at  the  angle  upon  which  willows  will 
grow  freely.  In  this  work  there  are  many  details  connected  with 
the  forms  of  these  shelter  dykes,  their  arrangements  so  as  to  present 
a  series  of  settling  basins,  etc.,  a  description  of  which  would  only 
complicate  the  conception.  Through  the  larger  part  of  the  river 
works  of  contraction  will  not  be  required,  but  nearly  all  the  banks 
on  the  concave  side  of  the  bends  must  be  held  against  the  wear  of 
the  stream,  and  much  of  the  opposite  banks  defended  at  critical 
points.  The  works  having  in  view  this  conservative  object  may  be 
generally  designated  works  of  revetment;  and  these  also  will  be 
largely  of  brushwood,  woven  in  continuous  carpets,  or  twined  into 
wire-netting.  This  veneering  process  has  been  successfully  employed 
on  the  Missouri  River ;  and  in  some  cases  they  have  so  covered  them- 
selves with  sediments,  and  have  become  so  overgrown  with  willows, 
that  they  may  be  regarded  as  permanent.  In  securing  these  mats 
rubble-stone  is  to  be  used  in  small  quantities,  and  in  some  instances 
the  dressed  slope  between  high  and  low  river  will  have  to  be  more 
or  less  paved  with  stone. 

Any  one  who  has  been  on  the  Rhine  will  have  observed  operations 
not  unlike  those  to  which  we  have  just  referred  ;  and,  indeed,  most 
of  the  rivers  of  Europe  flowing  among  their  own  alluvia  have 
required  similar  treatment  in  the  interest  of  navigation  and  agri- 
culture. 

The  levee  is  the  crowning  work  of  bank  revetment,  although  not 


APPENDIX  B.  607 

necessarily  in  immediate  connection.  It  may  be  set  back  a  short 
distance  from  the  revetted  bank ;  but  it  is,  in  effect,  the  requisite  para- 
pet. The  flood  river  and  the  low  river  cannot  be  brought  into  regis- 
ter, and  compelled  to  unite  in  the  excavation  of  a  single  permanent 
channel,  without  a  complete  control  of  all  the  stages  ;  and  even  the 
abnormal  rise  must  be  provided  against,  because  this  would  endanger 
the  levee,  and  once  in  force  behind  the  works  of  revetment  would 
tear  them  also  away. 

Under  the  general  principle  that  the  local  slope  of  a  river  is  the 
result  and  measure  of  the  resistance  of  its  bed,  it  is  evident  that  a 
narrow  and  deep  stream  should  have  less  slope,  because  it  has  less 
frictional  surface  in  proportion  to  capacity  ;  i.  e.,  less  perimeter  in 
proportion  to  area  of  cross  section.  The  ultimate  effect  of  levees 
and  revetments  confining  the  floods  and  bringing  all  the  stages  of  the 
river  into  register  is  to  deepen  the  channel  and  let  down  the  slope. 
The  first  effect  of  the  levees  is  to  raise  the  surface  ;  but  this,  by 
inducing  greater  velocity  of  flow,  inevitably  causes  an  enlargement 
of  section,  and  if  this  enlargement  is  prevented  from  being  made  at 
the  expense  of  the  banks,  the  bottom  must  give  way  and  the  form  of 
the  waterway  be  so  improved  as  to  admit  this  flow  with  less  rise. 
The  actual  experience  with  levees  upon  the  Mississippi  River,  with 
no  attempt  to  hold  the  banks,  has  been  favorable,  and  no  one  can 
doubt,  upon  the  evidence  furnished  in  the  reports  of  the  commission, 
that  if  the  earliest  levees  had  been  accompanied  by  revetment  of 
banks,  and  made  complete,  we  should  have  to-day  a  river  navigable 
at  low  water  and  an  adjacent  country  safe  from  inundation. 

Of  course  it  would  be  illogical  to  conclude  that  the  constrained 
river  can  ever  lower  its  flood  slope  so  as  to  make  levees  unnecessary, 
but  it  is  belteved  that,  by  this  lateral  constraint,  the  river  as  a 
conduit  may  be  so  improved  in  form  that  even  those  rare  floods 
which  result  from  the  coincident  rising  of  many  tributaries  will  find 
vent  without  destroying  levees  of  ordinary  height.  That  the  actual 
capacity  of  a  channel  through  alluvium  depends  upon  its  service 
during  floods  has  been  often  shown,  but  this  capacity  does  not 
include  anomalous,  but  recurrent,  floods. 

It  is  hardly  worth  while  to  consider  the  projects  for  relieving  the 
Mississippi  River  floods  by  creating  new  outlets,  since  these  sensa- 
tional propositions  have  commended  themselves  only  to  unthinking 
minds,  and  have  no  support  among  engineers.     Were  the  river  bed 


608  APPENDIX   C. 

cast-iron,  a  resort  to  openings  for  surplus  waters  might  be  a  neces- 
sity ;  but  as  the  bottom  is  yielding,  and  the  best  form  of  outlet  is  a 
single  deep  channel,  as  realizing  the  least  ratio  of  perimeter  to  area 
of  cross  section,  there  could  not  well  be  a  more  unphilosophical 
method  of  treatment  than  the  multiplication  of  avenues  of  escape. 

In  the  foregoing  statement  the  attempt  has  been  made  to  condense 
in  as  limited  a  space  as  the  importance  of  the  subject  would  permit, 
the  general  elements  of  the  problem,  and  the  general  features  of  the 
proposed  method  of  improvement  which  has  been  adopted  by  the 
Mississippi  River  Commission. 

The  writer  cannot  help  feeling  that  it  is  somewhat  presumptuous 
on  his  part  to  attempt  to  present  the  facts  relating  to  an  enterprise 
which  calls  for  the  highest  scientific  skill ;  but  it  is  a  matter  which 
interests  every  citizen  of  the  United  States,  and  is  one  of  the  meth- 
ods of  reconstruction  which  ought  to  be  approved.  It  is  a  war 
claim  which  implies  no  private  gain,  and  no  compensation  except  for 
one  of  the  cases  of  destruction  incident  to  war,  which  may  well  be 
repaired  by  the  people  of  the  whole  country. 

Edward  Atkinson. 

Boston,  April  14,  1882. 


c. 

RECEPTION  OF  CAPTAIN  BASIL  HALL'S  BOOK   IN  THE 
UNITED   STATES. 

Having  now  arrived  nearly  at  the  end  of  our  travels,  I  am 
induced,  ere  I  conclude,  again  to  mention  what  I  consider  as 
one  of.  the  most  remarkable  traits  in  the  national  character  of  the 
Americans ;  namely,  their  exquisite  sensitiveness  and  soreness  re- 
specting everything  said  or  written  concerning  them.  Of  this, 
perhaps,  the  most  remarkable  example  I  can  give  is  the  effect  pro- 
duced on  nearly  every  class  of  readers  by  the  appearance  of  Captain 
Basil  Hall's  "  Travels  in  North  America."  In  fact,  it  was  a  sort 
of  moral  earthquake,  and  the  vibration  it  occasioned  through  the 
nerves  of  the  republic,  from  one  corner  of  the  Union  to  the  other, 


APPENDIX   C.  609 

was  by  no  means  over  when  I  left  the  country  in  July,  1831,  a 
couple  of  years  after  the  shock. 

I  was  in  Cincinnati  when  these  volumes  came  out,  but  it  was  not 
till  July,  1830,  that  I  procured  a  copy  of  them.  One  bookseller 
to  whom  I  applied  told  me  that  he  had  had  a  few  copies  before 
he  understood  the  nature  of  the  work,  but  that,  after  becoming 
acquainted  with  it,  nothing  shoidd  induce  him  to  sell  another.  Other 
persons  of  his  profession  must,  however,  have  been  less  scrupulous  ; 
for  the  book  was  read  in  city,  town,  village,  and  hamlet,  steamboat, 
and  stage-coach,  and  a  sort  of  war-whoop  was  sent  forth  perfectly 
unprecedented  in  my  recollection  upon  any  occasion  whatever. 

An  ardent  desire  for  approbation,  and  a  delicate  sensitiveness 
under  censure,  have  always,  I  believe,  been  considered  as  amiable 
traits  of  character ;  but  the  condition  into  which  the  appearance  of 
Captain  Hall's  work  threw  the  republic  shows  plainly  that  these 
feelings,  if  carried  to  excess,  produce  a  weakness  which  amounts 
to  imbecility. 

It  was  perfectly  astonishing  to  hear  men  who,  on  other  subjects, 
were  of  some  judgment  utter  their  opinions  upon  this.  I  never 
heard  of  any  instance  in  which  the  common-sense  generally  found 
in  national  criticism  was  so  overthrown  by  passion.  I  do  not  speak 
of  the  want  of  justice,  and  of  fair  and  liberal  interpretation :  these, 
perhaps,  were  hardly  to  be  expected.  Other  nations  have  been 
called  thin-skinned,  but  the  citizens  of  the  Union  have,  apparently, 
no  skins  at  all ;  they  wince  if  a  breeze  blows  over  them,  unless  it 
be  tempered  with  adulation.  It  was  not,  therefore,  very  surprising 
that  the  acute  and  forcible  observations  of  a  traveller  they  knew 
would  be  listened  to  should  be  received  testily.  The  extraordinary 
features  of  the  business  were,  first,  the  excess  of  the  rage  into  which 
they  lashed  themselves  ;  and,  secondly,  the  puerility  of  the  inven- 
tions by  which  they  attempted  to  account  for  the  severity  with 
which  they  fancied  they  had  been  treated. 

Not  content  with  declaring  that  the  volumes  contained  no  word 
of  truth  from  beginning  to  end  (which  is  an  assertion  I  heard  made 
very  nearly  as  often  as  they  were  mentioned),  the  whole  country 
set  to  work  to  discover  the  causes  why  Captain  Hall  had  visited  the 
United  States,  and  why  he  had  published  his  book. 

I  have  heard  it  said  with  as  much  precision  and  gravity  as  if  the 
statement  had  been  conveyed  by  an  official  report,  that  Captain 


'610  APPENDIX    C. 

Hall  had  been  sent  out  by  the  British  government  expressly  for  the 
purpose  of  checking  the  growing  admiration  of  England  for  the 
government  of  the  United  States,  —  that  it  was  by  a  commission 
from  the  treasury  he  had  come,  and  that  it  was  only  in  obedience 
to  orders  that  he  had  found  anything  to  object  to. 

I  do  not  give  this  as  the  gossip  of  a  coterie ;  I  am  persuaded  that 
it  is  the  belief  of  a  very  considerable  portion  of  the  country.  So 
deep  is  the  conviction  of  this  singular  people  that  they  cannot  be 
seen  without  being  admired,  that  they  will  not  admit  the  possibility 
that  any  one  should  honestly  and  sincerely  find  aught  to  disapprove 
in  them  or  their  country. 

The  American  Reviews  are,  many  of  them,  I  believe,  well  known 
in  England;  I  need  not,  therefore,  quote  them  here,  but  I  some- 
times wondered  that  they,  none  of  them,  ever  thought  of  translating 
Obadiah's  curse  into  classic  American  ;  if  they  had  done  so,  on 
placing  (he,  Basil  Hall,)  between  brackets,  instead  of  (he,  Obadiah,) 
it  would  have  saved  them  a  world  of  trouble. 

I  can  hardly  describe  the  curiosity  with  which  I  sat  down  at 
length  to  peruse  these  tremendous  volumes ;  still  less  can  I  do 
justice  to  my  surprise  at  their  contents.  To  say  that  I  found  not 
one  exaggerated  statement  throughout  the  work  is  by  no  means 
saying  enough.  It  is  impossible  for  any  one  who  knows  the 
country  not  to  see  that  Captain  Hall  earnestly  sought  out  things  to 
admire  and  commend.  When  he  praises,  it  is  with  evident  pleas- 
ure ;  and  when  he  finds  fault,  it  is  with  evident  reluctance  and 
restraint,  excepting  where  motives  purely  patriotic  urge  him  to 
state  roundly  what  it  is  for  the  benefit  of  his  country  should  be 
known. 

In  fact,  Captain  Hall  saw  the  country  to  the  greatest  possible 
advantage.  Furnished,  of  course,  with  letters  of  introduction  to 
the  most  distinguished  individuals,  and  with  the  still  more  influen- 
tial recommendation  of  his  own  reputation,  he  was  received  in  full 
drawing-room  style  and  state  from  one  end  of  the  Union  to  the 
other.  He  saw  the  country  in  full  dress,  and  had  little  or  no 
opportunity  of  judging  of  it  unhouselled,  unanointed,  unannealed, 
with  all  its  imperfections  on  its  head,  as  I  and  my  family  too 
often  had. 

Captain  Hall  had  certainly  excellent  opportunities  of  making 
himself  acquainted  with  the  form  of  the  government  and  the  laws ; 


APPENDIX    C.  611 

and  of  receiving,  moreover,  the  best  oral  commentary  upon  them, 
in  conversation  with  the  most  distinguished  citizens.  Of  these 
opportunities  he  made  excellent  use ;  nothing  important  met  his  eye 
which  did  not  receive  that  sort  of  analytical  attention  which  an 
experienced  and  philosophical  traveller  alone  can  give.  This  has 
made  his  volumes  highly  interesting  and  valuable ;  but  I  am  deeply 
persuaded,  that  were  a  man  of  equal  penetration  to  visit  the  United 
States  with  no  other  means  of  becoming  acquainted  with  the  national 
character  than  the  ordinary  working-day  intercourse  of  life,  he 
would  conceive  an  infinitely  lower  idea  of  the  moral  atmosphere  of 
the  country  than  Captain  Hall  appears  to  have  done ;  and  the  inter- 
nal conviction  on  my  mind  is  strong,  that  if  Captain  Hall  had  not 
placed  a  firm  restraint  on  himself,  he  must  have  given  expression  to 
far  deeper  indignation  than  any  he  has  uttered  against  many  points 
in  the  American  character,  with  which  he  shows  from  other  circum- 
stances that  he  was  well  acquainted.  His  rule  appears  to  have 
been  to  state  just  so  much  of  the  truth  as  would  leave  on  the  mind 
of  his  readers  a  correct  impression,  at  the  least  cost  of  pain  to  the 
sensitive  folks  he  was  writing  about.  He  states  his  own  opinions 
and  feelings,  and  leaves  it  to  be  inferred  that  he  has  good  grounds 
for  adopting  them  ;  but  he  spares  the  Americans  the  bitterness 
which  a  detail  of  the  circumstances  would  have  produced. 

If  any  one  chooses  to  say  that  some  wicked  antipathy  to  twelve 
millions  of  strangers  is  the  origin  of  my  opinion,  I  must  bear  it ;  and 
were  the  question  one  of  mere  idle  speculation,  I  certainly  would  not 
court  the  abuse  I  must  meet  for  stating  it.     But  it  is  not  so. 

The  candor  which  he  expresses,  and  evidently  feels,  they  mistake 
for  irony,  or  totally  distrust ;  his  unwillingness  to  give  pain  to  per- 
sons from  whom  he  has  received  kindness,  they  scornfully  reject  as 
affectation,  and  although  they  must  know  right  well,  in  their  own 
secret  hearts,  how  infinitely  more  they  lay  at  his  mercy  than  he  has 
chosen  to  betray ;  they  pretend,  even  to  themselves,  that  he  has 
exaggerated  the  bad  points  of  their  character  and  institutions ; 
whereas,  the  truth  is,  that  he  has  let  them  off  with  a  degree  of 
tenderness  which  may  be  quite  suitable  for  him  to  exercise,  how- 
ever little  merited ;  while,  at  the  same  time,  he  has  most  industri- 
ously magnified  their  merits,  whenever  he  could  possibly  find  any- 
thing favorable. 


612  APPENDIX   D. 

D. 

THE   UNDYING   HEAD. 

In  a  remote  part  of  the  North  lived  a  man  and  his  sister,  who 
had  never  seen  a  human  being.  Seldom,  if  ever,  had  the  man 
any  cause  to  go  from  home ;  for,  as  his  wants  demanded  food,  he 
had  only  to  go  a  little  distance  from  the  lodge,  and  there,  in  some 
particular  spot,  place  his  arrows,  with  their  barbs  in  the  ground. 
Telling  his  sister  where  they  had  been  placed,  every  morning  she 
would  go  in  search,  and  never  fail  of  finding  each  stuck  through 
the  heart  of  a  deer.  She  had  then  only  to  drag  them  into  the 
lodge  and  prepare  their  food.  Thus  she  lived  till  she  attained 
womanhood,  when  one  day  her  brother,  whose  name  was  Iamo,  said 
to  her  :  "  Sister,  the  time  is  at  hand  when  you  will  be  ill.  Listen  to 
my  advice.  If  you  do  not,  it  will  probably  be  the  cause  of  my  death. 
Take  the  implements  with  which  we  kindle  our  fires.  Go  some 
distance  from  our  lodge  and  build  a  separate  fire.  When  you  are 
in  want  of  food,  I  will  tell  you  where  to  find  it.  You  must  cook 
for  yourself,  and  I  will  for  myself.  When  you  are  ill,  do  not 
attempt  to  come  near  the  lodge,  or  bring  any  of  the  utensils  you 
use.  Be  sure  always  to  fasten  to  your  belt  the  implements  you 
need,  for  you  do  not  know  when  the  time  will  come.  As  for 
myself,  I  must  do  the  best  I  can."  His  sister  promised  to  obey 
him  in  all  he  had  said. 

Shortly  after,  her  brother  had  cause  to  go  from  home.  She  was 
alone  in  her  lodge,  combing  her  hair.  She  had  just  untied  the  belt 
to  which  the  implements  were  fastened,  when  suddenly  the  event, 
to  which  her  brother  had  alluded,  occurred.  She  ran  out  of  the 
lodge,  but  in  her  haste  forgot  the  belt.  Afraid  to  return,  she  stood 
for  some  time  thinking.  Finally,  she  decided  to  enter  the  lodge 
and  get  it.  For,  thought  she,  my  brother  is  not  at  home,  and  I 
will  stay  but  a  moment  to  catch  hold  of  it.  She  went  back.  Run- 
ning in  suddenly,  she  caught  hold  of  it,  and  was  coming  out  when 
her  brother  came  in  sight.  He  knew  what  was  the  matter.  "  Oh," 
he  said,  "  did  I  not  tell  you  to  take  care  ?  But  now  you  have  killed 
me."      She  was  going  on  her  way,  but  her  brother  said  to  her, 


APPENDIX   D.  613 

"  What  can  you  do  there  now  ?  The  accident  has  happened.  Go 
in,  and  stay  where  you  have  always  stayed.  And  what  will  become 
of  you  ?     You  have  killed  me." 

He  then  laid  aside  his  hunting-dress  and  accoutrements,  and  soon 
after  both  his  feet  began  to  turn  black,  so  that  he  could  not  move. 
Still  he  directed  his  sister  where  to  place  the  arrows,  that  she  might 
always  have  food.  The  inflammation  continued  to  increase,  and  had 
now  reached  his  first  rib  ;  and  he  said  :  "  Sister,  my  end  is  near.  You 
must  do  as  I  tell  you.  You  see  my  medicine-sack,  and  my  war- 
club  tied  to  it.  It  contains  all  my  medicines,  and  my  war-plumes, 
and  my  paints  of  all  colors.  As  soon  as  the  inflammation  reaches  my 
breast,  you  will  take  my  war-club.  It  has  a  sharp  point,  and  you 
will  cut  off  my  head.  When  it  is  free  from  my  body,  take  it,  place 
its  neck  in  the  sack,  which  you  must  open  at  one  end.  Then  hang 
it  up  in  its  former  place.  Do  not  forget  my  bow  and  arrows.  One 
of  the  last  you  will  take  to  procure  food.  The  remainder,  tie  in 
my  sack,  and  then  hang  it  up,  so  that  I  can  look  towards  the  door. 
Now  and  then  I  will  speak  to  you,  but  not  often."  His  sister  again 
promised  to  obey. 

In  a  little  time  his  breast  was  affected.  "Now,"  said  he,  "take 
the  club  and  strike  off  my  head."  She  was  afraid,  but  he  told  her 
to  muster  courage.  "  Strike,"  said  he,  and  a  smile  was  on  his  face. 
Mustering  all  her  courage,  she  gave  the  blow  and  cut  off  the  head. 
"  Now,"  said  the  head,  "  place  me  where  I  told  you."  And  fear- 
fully she  obeyed  it  in  all  its  commands.  Retaining  its  animation, 
it  looked  around  the  lodge  as  usual,  and  it  would  command  its  sister 
to  go  in  such  places  as  it  thought  would  procure  for  her  the  flesh  of 
different  animals  she  needed.  One  day  the  head  said :  "  The  time 
is  not  distant  when  I  shall  be  freed  from  this  situation,  and  I  shall 
have  to  undergo  many  sore  evils.  So  the  superior  manito  decrees, 
and  I  must  bear  all  patiently."  In  this  situation  we  must  leave  the 
head. 

In  a  certain  part  of  the  country  was  a  village  inhabited  by  a 
numerous  and  warlike  band  of  Indians.  In  this  village  was  a 
family  of  ten  young  men  —  brothers.  It  was  in  the  spring  of  the 
year  that  the  youngest  of  these  blackened  his  face  and  fasted.  His 
dreams  were  propitious.  Having  ended  his  fast,  he  went  secretly 
for  his  brothers  at  night,  so  that  none  in  the  village  could  overhear 
or  find  out  the  direction  they  intended  to  go.     Though  their  drum 


614  APPENDIX  D. 

was  heard,  yet  that  was  a  common  occurrence.  Having  ended  the 
usual  formalities,  he  told  how  favorable  his  dreams  were,  and  that 
he  had  called  them  together  to  know  if  they  would  accompany  him 
in  a  war  excursion.  They  all  answered  they  would.  The  third 
brother  from  the  eldest,  noted  for  his  oddities,  coming  up  with 
his  war-club  when  his  brother  had  ceased  speaking,  jumped  up. 
"  Yes,"  said  he,  "  I  will  go,  and  this  will  be  the  way  I  will  treat 
those  I  am  going  to  fight ; "  and  he  struck  the  post  in  the  centre  of 
the  lodge,  and  gave  a  yell.  The  others  spoke  to  him,  saying : 
"  Slow,  slow,  Mudjikewis,  when  you  are  in  other  people's  lodges." 
So  he  sat  down.  Then,  in  turn,  they  took  the  drum,  and  sang  their 
songs,  and  closed  with  a  feast.  The  youngest  told  them  not  to 
whisper  their  intention  to  their  wives,  but  secretly  to  prepare  for 
their  journey.  They  all  promised  obedience,  and.  Mudjikewis  was 
the  first  to  say  so. 

The  time  for  their  departure  drew  near.  Word  was  given  to 
assemble  on  a  certain  night,  when  they  would  depart  immediately. 
Mudjikewis  was  loud  in  his  demands  for  his  moccasins.  Several 
times  his  wife  asked  him  the  reason.  "  Besides,"  said  she,  "  you 
have  a  good  pair  on."  "Quick,  quick,"  said  he,  "since  you  must 
know,  we  are  going  on  a  war  excursion ;  so  be  quick."  He  thus 
revealed  the  secret.  That  night  they  met  and  started.  The  snow 
was  on  the  ground,  and  they  travelled  all  night,  lest  others  should 
follow  them.  When  it  was  daylight,  the  leader  took  snow  and 
made  a  ball  of  it,  then  tossing  it  into  the  air,  he  said :  "  It  was  in 
this  way  I  saw  snow  fall  in  a  dream,  so  that  I  could  not  be  tracked." 
And  he  told  them  to  keep  close  to  each  other  for  fear  of  losing 
themselves,  as  the  snow  began  to  fall  in  very  large  flakes.  Near  as 
they  walked,  it  was  with  difficulty  they  could  see  each  other.  The 
snow  continued  falling  all  that  day  and  the  following  night,  so  it 
was  impossible  to  track  them. 

They  had  now  walked  for  several  days,  and  Mudjikewis  was 
always  in  the  rear.  One  day,  running  suddenly  forward,  he  gave 
the  saw-saw-quan,1  and  struck  a  tree  with  his  war-club,  and  it  broke 
into  pieces  as  if  struck  with  lightning.  "  Brothers,"  said  he,  "  this 
will  be  the  way  I  will  serve  those  we  are  going  to  fight."  The 
leader  answered,  "  Slow,  slow,  Mudjikewis,  the  one  I  lead  you  to  is 

1  War-wlioop. 


APPENDIX  D.  615 

not  to  be  thought  of  so  lightly."  Again  he  fell  back  and  thought 
to  himself :  "  What !  what !  who  can  this  be  he  is  leading  us  to  ?  " 
He  felt  fearful  and  was  silent.  Day  after  clay  they  travelled  on, 
till  they  came  to  an  extensive  plain,  on  the  borders  of  which  human 
bones  were  bleaching  in  the  sun.  The  leader  spoke :  "  They  are 
the  bones  of  those  who  have  gone  before  us.  None  has  ever  yet 
returned  to  tell  the  sad  tale  of  their  fate."  Again  Mudjikewis 
became  restless,  and,  running  forward,  gave  the  accustomed  yell. 
Advancing  to  a  large  rock  which  stood  above  the  ground,  he  struck 
it,  and  it  fell  to  pieces.  "  See,  brothers,"  said  he,  "  thus  will  I 
treat  those  whom  we  are  going  to  fight."  "  Still,  still,"  once  more 
said  the  leader ;  "  he  to  whom  I  am  leading  you  is  not  to  be  com- 
pared to  the  rock." 

Mudjikewis  fell  back  thoughtful,  saying  to  himself :  "  I  wonder 
who  this  can  be  that  he  is  going  to  attack ; "  and  he  was  afraid. 
Still  they  continued  to  see  the  remains  of  former  warriors,  who  had 
been  to  the  place  where  they  were  now  going,  some  of  whom  had 
retreated  as  far  back  as  the  place  where  they  first  saw  the  bones, 
beyond  which  no  one  had  ever  escaped.  At  last  they  came  to  a 
piece  of  rising  ground,  from  which  they  plainly  distinguished, 
sleeping  on  a  distant  mountain,  a  mammoth  bear. 

The  distance  between  them  was  very  great,  but  the  size  of  the 
animal  caused  him  to  be  plainly  seen.  "  There,"  said  the  leader, 
"  it  is  he  to  whom  I  am  leading  you ;  here  our  troubles  will  com- 
mence, for  he  is  a  mishemokwa  and  a  manito.  It  is  he  who  has 
that  we  prize  so  dearly  (i.e.  wampum),  to  obtain  which,  the  war- 
riors whose  bones  we  saw,  sacrificed  their  lives.  You  must  not 
be  fearful ;  be  manly.  We  shall  find  him  asleep."  Then  the 
leader  went  forward  and  touched  the  belt  around  the  animal's  neck. 
"  This,"  said  he,  "  is  what  we  must  get.  It  contains  the  wampum." 
Then  they  requested  the  eldest  to  try  and  slip  the  belt  over  the 
bear's  head,  who  appeared  to  be  fast  asleep,  as  he  was  not  in  the 
least  disturbed  by  the  attempt  to  obtain  the  belt.  All  their  efforts 
were  in  vain,  till  it  came  to  the  one  next  the  youngest.  He  tried, 
and  the  belt  moved  nearly  over  the  monster's  head,  but  he  could 
get  it  no  farther.  Then  the  youngest  one,  and  the  leader,  made  his 
attempt,  and  succeeded.  Placing  it  on  the  back  of  the  oldest,  he 
said,  "  Now  we  must  run,"  and  off  they  started.  When  one  became 
fatigued  with  its  weight,  another  would  relieve  him.      Thus  they 


616  APPENDIX   D. 

ran  till  they  had  passed  the  bones  of  all  former  warriors,  and  were 
some  distance  beyond,  when,  looking  back,  they  saw  the  monster 
slowly  rising.  He  stood  some  time  before  he  missed  his  wampum. 
Soon  they  heard  his  tremendous  howl,  like  distant  thunder,  slowly 
filling  all  the  sky  ;  and  then  they  heard  him  speak  and  say,  "  Who 
can  it  be  that  has  dared  to  steal  my  wampum  ?  earth  is  not  so 
large  but  that  I  can  find  them ; "  and  he  descended  from  the  hill  in 
pursuit.  As  if  convulsed,  the  earth  shook  with  every  jump  he 
made.  Very  soon  he  approached  the  party.  They,  however,  kept 
the  belt,  exchanging  it  from  one  to  another,  and  encouraging  each 
other ;  but  he  gained  on  them  fast.  "  Brothers,"  said  the  leader, 
"  has  never  any  one  of  you,  when  fasting,  dreamed  of  some  friendly 
spirit  who  would  aid  you  as  a  guardian  ?  "  A  dead  silence  followed. 
"Well,"  said  he,  "fasting,  I  dreamed  of  being  in  danger  of  instant 
death,  when  I  saw  a  small  lodge,  with  smoke  curling  from  its  top. 
An  old  man  lived  in  it,  and  I  dreamed  he  helped  me ;  and  may  it 
be  verified  soon,"  he  said,  running  forward  and  giving  the  peculiar 
yell,  and  a  howl  as  if  the  sounds  came  from  the  depths  of  his 
stomach,  and  what  is  called  checaiidum.  Getting  upon  a  piece  of 
rising  ground,  behold !  a  lodge,  with  smoke  curling  from  its  top, 
appeared.  This  gave  them  all  new  strength,  and  they  ran  forward 
and  entered  it.  The  leader  spoke  to  the  old  man  who  sat  in  the 
lodge,  saying,  "  Nemesho,  help  us ;  we  claim  your  protection,  for 
the  great  bear  will  kill  us."  "  Sit  down  and  eat,  my  grandchil- 
dren," said  the  old  man.  "  Who  is  a  great  manito  ? "  said  he. 
"  There  is  none  but  me ;  but  let  me  look,"  and  he  opened  the  door 
of  the  lodge,  when,  lo !  at  a  little  distance  he  saw  the  enraged 
animal  coming  on,  with  slow  but  powerful  leaps.  Pie  closed  the 
door.  "  Yes,"  said  he,  "  he  is  indeed  a  great  manito :  my  grand- 
children, you  will  be  the  cause  of  my  losing  my  life ;  you  asked  my 
protection,  and  I  granted  it ;  so  now,  come  what  may,  I  will  protect 
you.  When  the  bear  arrives  at  the  door,  you  must  run  out  of  the 
other  door  of  the  lodge."  Then  putting  his  hand  to  the  side  of  the 
lodge  where  he  sat,  he  brought  out  a  bag  which  he  opened.  Taking 
out  two  small  black  dogs,  he  placed  them  before  him.  "  These  are 
the  ones  I  use  when  I  fight,"  said  he ;  and  he  commenced  patting 
with  both  hands  the  sides  of  one  of  them,  and  he  began  to  swell 
out,  so  that  he  soon  filled  the  lodge  by  his  bulk ;  and  he  had  great 
strong  teeth.     When  he  attained  his  full  size  he  growled,  and  from 


APPENDIX  D.  617 

that  moment,  as  from  instinct,  he  jumped  out  at  the  door  and  met 
the  bear,  who  in  another  leap  would  have  reached  the  lodge.  A 
terrible  combat  ensued.  The  skies  rang  with  the  howls  of  the 
fierce  monsters.  The  remaining  dog  soon  took  the  field.  The 
brothers,  at  the  onset,  took  the  advice  of  the  old  man,  and  escaped 
through  the  opposite  side  of  the  lodge.  They  had  not  proceeded 
far  before  they  heard  the  dying  cry  of  one  of  the  dogs,  and  soon 
after  of  the  other.  "  Well,"  said  the  leader,  "  the  old  man  will 
share  their  fate :  so  run ;  he  will  soon  be  after  us."  They  started 
with  fresh  vigor,  for  they  had  received  food  from  the  old  man :  but 
very  soon  the  bear  came  in  sight,  and  again  was  fast  gaining  upon 
them.  Again  the  leader  asked  the  brothers  if  they  could  do  nothing 
for  their  safety.  All  were  silent.  The  leader,  running  forward, 
did  as  before.  "  I  dreamed,"  he  cried,  "  that,  being  in  great  trouble, 
an  old  man  helped  me  who  was  a  manito ;  we  shall  soon  see  his 
lodge."  Taking  courage,  they  still  went  on.  After  going  a  short 
distance  they  saw  the  lodge  of  the  old  manito.  They  entered  im- 
mediately and  claimed  his  protection,  telling  him  a  manito  was 
after  them.  The  old  man,  setting  meat  before  them,  said :  "  Eat ! 
who  is  a  manito  ?  there  is  no  manito  but  me  ;  there  is  none  whom 
I  fear ; "  and  the  earth  trembled  as  the  monster  advanced.  The 
old  man  opened  the  door  and  saw  him  coming.  He  shut  it  slowly, 
and  said :  "  Yes,  my  grandchildren,  you  have  brought  trouble  upon 
me."  Procuring  his  medicine-sack,  he  took  out  his  small  war-clubs 
of  black  stone,  and  told  the  young  men  to  run  through  the  other 
side  of  the  lodge.  As  he  handled  the  clubs,  they  became  very  large, 
and  the  old  man  stepped  out  just  as  the  bear  reached  the  door. 
Then  striking  him  with  one  of  the  clubs,  it  broke  in  pieces  ;  the 
bear  stumbled.  Renewing  the  attempt  with  the  other  war-club, 
that  also  was  broken,  but  the  bear  fell  senseless.  Each  blow  the 
old  man  gave  him  sounded  like  a  clap  of  thunder,  and  the  howls  of 
the  bear  ran  along  till  they  filled  the  heavens. 

The  young  men  had  now  run  some  distance,  when  they  looked 
back.  They  could  see  that  the  bear  was  recovering  from  the  blows. 
First  he  moved  his  paws,  and  soon  they  saw  him  rise  on  his  feet. 
The  old  man  shared  the  fate  of  the  first,  for  they  now  heard  his  cries 
as  he  was  torn  in  pieces.  Again  the  monster  was  in  pursuit,  and  fast 
overtaking  them.  Not  yet  discouraged,  the  young  men  kept  on  their 
way  ;  but  the  bear  was  now  so  close,  that  the  leader  once  more  ap- 


618  APPENDIX   D. 

plied  to  his  brothers,  but  they  could  do  nothing.  "  Well,"  said  he, 
"  my  dreams  will  soon  be  exhausted ;  after  this  I  have  but  one  more." 
He  advanced,  invoking  his  guardian  spirit  to  aid  him.  "  Once," 
said  he,  "  J  dreamed  that,  being  sorely  pressed,  I  came  to  a  large 
lake,  on  the  shore  of  which  was  a  canoe,  partly  out  of  water,  having 
ten  paddles  all  in  readiness.  Do  not  fear,"  he  cried,  "  we  shall 
soon  get  it."  And  so  it  was,  even  as  he  had  said.  Coming  to  the  lake, 
they  saw  the  canoe  with  ten  paddles,  and  immediately  they  embarked. 
Scarcely  had  they  reached  the  centre  of  the  lake,  when  they  saw 
the  bear  arrive  at  its  borders.  Lifting  himself  on  his  hind  legs,  he 
looked  all  around.  Then  he  waded  into  the  water  ;  then  losing  his 
footing  he  turned  back,  and  commenced  making  the  circuit  of  the 
lake.  Meantime  the  party  remained  stationary  in  the  centre  to 
watch  his  movements.  He  travelled  all  around,  till  at  last  he  came 
to  the  place  from  whence  he  started.  Then  he  commenced  drinking 
up  the  water,  and  they  saw  the  current  fast  setting  in  towards  his 
open  mouth.  The  leader  encouraged  them  to  paddle  hard  for  the 
opposite  shore.  When  only  a  short  distance  from  land,  the  current 
had  increased  so  much,  that  they  were  drawn  back  by  it,  and  all 
their  efforts  to  reach  it  were  in  vain. 

Then  the  leader  again  spoke,  telling  them  to  meet  their  fates  man- 
fully. "  Now  is  the  time,  Mudjikewis,"  said  he,  "  to  show  your 
prowess.  Take  courage  and  sit  at  the  bow  of  the  canoe  ;  and  when 
it  approaches  his  mouth,  try  what  effect  your  club  will  have  on  his 
head."  He  obeyed,  and  stood  ready  to  give  the  blow  ;  while  the 
leader,  who  steered,  directed  the  canoe  for  the  open  mouth  of  the 
monster. 

Rapidly  advancing,  they  were  just  about  to  enter  his  mouth,  when 
Mudjikewis  struck  him  a  tremendous  blow  on  the  head,  and  gave  the 
saw-saw-quan.  The  bear's  limbs  doubled  under  him,  and  he  fell, 
stunned  by  the  blow.  But  before  Mudjikewis  could  renew  it,  the 
monster  disgorged  all  the  water  he  had  drank,  with  a  force  which 
sent  the  canoe  with  great  velocity  to  the  opposite  shore.  Instantly 
leaving  the  canoe,  again  they  fled,  and  on  they  went  till  they  were 
completely  exhausted.  The  earth  again  shook,  and  soon  they  saw 
the  monster  hard  after  them.  Their  spirits  drooped,  and  they  felt  dis- 
couraged. The  leader  exerted  himself,  by  actions  and  words,  to  cheer 
them  up  ;  and  once  more  he  asked  them  if  they  thought  of  nothing, 
or  could  do  nothing  for  their  rescue  ;  and,  as  before,  all  were  silent. 


APPENDIX  D.  619 

"  Then,"  he  said,  "  this  is  the  last  time  I  can  apply  to  my  guardian 
spirit.  Now,  if  we  do  not  succeed,  our  fates  are  decided."  He  ran 
forward,  invoking  his  spirit  with  great  earnestness,  and  gave  the 
yell.  "  We  shall  soon  arrive,"  said  he  to  his  brothers,  "  at  the  place 
where  my  last  guardian  spirit  dwells.  In  him  I  place  great  confi- 
dence. Do  not,  do  not  be  afraid,  or  your  limbs  will  be  fear-bound. 
We  shall  soon  reach  his  lodge.     Run,  run,"  he  cried. 

Returning  now  to  Iamo,  he  had  passed  all  the  time  in  the  same 
condition  we  had  left  him,  the  head  directing  his  sister,  in  order  to 
procure  food,  where  to  place  the  magic  arrows,  and  speaking  at  long 
intervals.  One  day  the  sister  saw  the  eyes  of  the  head  brighten,  as 
if  with  pleasure.  At  last  it  spoke.  "  Oh,  sister,"  it  said,  "  in  what 
a  pitiful  situation  you  have  been  the  cause  of  placing  me  !  Soon, 
very  soon,  a  party  of  young  men  will  arrive  and  apply  to  me  for 
aid  ;  but  alas  !  How  can  I  give  what  I  would  have  done  with  so 
much  pleasure  ?  Nevertheless,  take  two  arrows,  and  place  them 
where  you  have  been  in  the  habit  of  placing  the  others,  and  have 
meat  prepared  and  cooked  before  they  arrive.  When  you  hear 
them  coming  and  calling  on  my  name,  go  out  and  say,  '  Alas !  it 
is  long  ago  that  an  accident  befell  him.  I  was  the  cause  of  it.'  If 
they  still  come  near,  ask  them  in,  and  set  meat  before  them.  And 
now  you  must  follow  my  directions  strictly.  When  the  bear  is 
near,  go  out  and  meet  him.  You  will  take  my  medicine-sack,  bows 
and  arrows,  and  my  head.  You  must  then  untie  the  sack,  and 
spread  out  before  you  my  paints  of  all  colors,  my  war-eagle  feathers, 
my  tufts  of  dried  hair,  and  whatever  else  it  contains.  As  the  bear 
approaches,  you  will  take  all  these  articles,  one  by  one,  and  say  to 
him,  '  This  is  my  deceased  brother's  paint,'  and  so  on  with  all  the 
other  articles,  throwing  each  of  them  as  far  as  you  can.  The  vir- 
tues contained  in  them  will  cause  him  to  totter ;  and,  to  complete 
his  destruction,  you  will  take  my  head,  and  that  too  you  will  cast  as 
far  off  as  you  can,  crying  aloud,  '  See,  this  is  my  deceased  brother's 
head.'  He  will  then  fall  senseless.  By  this  time  the  young  men 
will  have  eaten,  and  you  will  call  them  to  your  assistance.  You 
must  then  cut  the  carcass  into  pieces,  yes,  into  small  pieces,  and 
scatter  them  to  the  four  winds  ;  for,  unless  you  do  this,  he  will 
again  revive."  She  promised  that  all  should  be  done  as  he  said. 
She  had  only  time  to  prepare  the  meat,  when  the  voice  of  the 
leader  was  heard  calling  upon  Iamo  for  aid.     The  woman  went  out 


620  '  APPENDIX   D. 

and  said  as  her  brother  had  directed.  But  the  war  party  being 
closely  pursued,  came  up  to  the  lodge.  She  invited  them  in,  and 
placed  the  meat  before  them.  While  they  were  eating,  they  heard 
the  bear  approaching.  Untying  the  medicine-sack  and  taking  the 
head,  she  had  all  in  readiness  for  his  approach.  When  he  came  up 
she  did  as  she  had  been  told ;  and,  before  she  had  expended  the 
paints  and  feathers,  the  bear  began  to  totter,  but,  still  advancing,  came 
close  to  the  woman.  Saying  as  she  was  commanded,  she  then  took 
the  head,  and  cast  it  as  far  from  her  as  she  could.  As  it  rolled 
along  the  ground,  the  blood,  excited  by  the  feelings  of  the  head  in 
this  terrible  scene,  gushed  from  the  nose  and  mouth.  The  bear, 
tottering,  soon  fell  with  a  tremendous  noise.  Then  she  cried  for 
helf>,  and  the  young  men  came  rushing  out,  having  partially 
regained  their  strength  and  spirits. 

Mudjikewis,  stepping  up,  gave  a  yell  and  struck  him  a  blow  upon 
the  head.  This  he  repeated,  till  it  seemed  like  a  mass  of  brains, 
while  the  others,  as  quick  as  possible,  cut  him  into  very  small  pieces, 
which  they  then  scattered  in  every  direction.  While  thus  employed, 
happening  to  look  around  where  they  had  thrown  the  meat,  wonder- 
ful to  behold,  they  saw  starting  up  and  running  off  in  every  direc- 
tion small  black  bears,  such  as  are  seen  at  the  present  day.  The 
country  was^  soon  overspread  with  these  black  animals.  And  it  was 
from  this  monster  that  the  present  race  of  bears  derived  their  origin. 

Having  thus  overcome  their  pursuer,  they  returned  to  the  lodge. 
In  the  mean  time,  the  woman,  gathering  the  implements  she  had 
used,  and  the  head,  placed  them  again  in  the  sack.  But  the  head 
did  not  speak  again,  probably  from  its  great  exertion  to  overcome 
the  monster. 

Having  spent  so  much  time  and  traversed  so  vast  a  country 
in  their  flight,  the  young  men  gave  up  the  idea  of  ever  return- 
ing to  their  own  country,  and  game  being  plenty,  they  determined 
to  remain  where  they  now  were.  One  day  they  moved  off  some 
distance  from  the  lodge  for  the  purpose  of  hunting,  having  left  the 
wampum  with  the  woman.  They  were  very  successful,  and  amused 
themselves,  as  all  young  men  do  when  alone,  by  talking  and  jesting 
with  each  other.  One  of  them  spoke  and  said,  "  We  have  all  this 
sport  to  ourselves  ;  let  us  go  and  ask  our  sister  if  she  will  not  let  us 
bring  the  head  to  this  place,  as  it  is  still  alive.  It  may  be  pleased 
to  hear  us  talk,  and  be  in  our  company.     In  the  mean  time  take  food 


APPENDIX  D.  621 

to  our  sister."  They  went  and  requested  the  head.  She  told  them 
to  take  it,  and  they  took  it  to  their  hunting-grounds,  and  tried  to 
amuse  it,  hut  only  at  times  did  they  see  its  eyes  heam  with  pleasure. 
One  day,  while  husy  in  their  encampment,  they  were  unexpectedly 
attacked  hy  unknown  Indians.  The  skirmish  was  long  contested 
and  bloody  ;  many  of  their  foes  were  slain,  but  still  they  were 
thirty  to  one.  The  young  men  fought  desperately  till  they  were  all 
killed.  The  attacking  party  then  retreated  to  a  height  of  ground, 
to  muster  their  men,  and  to  count  the  number  of  missing  and  slain. 
One  of  their  young  men  had  stayed  away,  and,  in  endeavoring  to 
overtake  them,  came  to  the  place  where  the  head  was  hung  up. 
Seeing  that  alone  retain  animation,  he  eyed  it  for  some  time  with 
fear  and  surprise.  However,  he  took  it  down  and  opened  the  sack, 
and  was  much  pleased  to  see  the  beautiful  feathers,  one  of  which  he 
placed  on  his  head. 

Starting  off,  it  waved  gracefully  over  him  till  he  reached  his  party, 
when  he  threw  down  the  head  and  sack,  and  told  them  how  he  had 
found  it,  and  that  the  sack  was  full  of  paints  and  feathers.  They  all 
looked  at  the  head  and  made  sport  of  it.  Numbers  of  the  young 
men  took  the  paint  and  painted  themselves,  and  one  of  the  party  took 
the  head  by  the  hair  and  said  :  — 

"  Look,  you  ugly  thing,  and  see  your  paints  on  the  faces  of  war- 
riors." 

But  the  feathers  were  so  beautiful,  that  numbers  of  them  also 
placed  them  on  their  heads.  Then  again  they  used  all  kinds  of 
indignity  to  the  head,  for  which  they  were  in  turn  repaid  by  the 
death  of  those  who  had  used  the  feathers.  Then  the  chief  com- 
manded them  to  throw  away  all  except  the  head.  "  We  will  see," 
said  he,  "  when  we  get  home,  what  we  can  do  with  it.  We  will  try 
to  make  it  shut  its  eyes." 

When  they  reached  their  homes  they  took  it  to  the  council-lodge, 
and  hung  it  up  before  the  fire,  fastening  it  with  raw  hide  soaked, 
which  would  shrink  and  become  tightened  by  the  action  of  the  fire. 
"  We  will  then  see,"  they  said,  "  if  we  cannot  make  it  shut  its 
eyes." 

Meantime,  for  several  days,  the  sister  had  been  waiting  for  the 
young  men  to  bring  back  the  head  ;  till,  at  last,  getting  impatient, 
she  went  in  search  of  it.  The  young  men  she  found  lying  within 
short  distances  of  each  other,  dead,  and  covered  with  wounds.     Vari- 


622  APPENDIX  D. 

ous  other  bodies  lay  scattered  in  different  directions  around  them. 
She  searched  for  the  head  and  sack,  but  they  were  nowhere  to  be 
found.  She  raised  her  voice  and  wept,  and  blackened  her  face. 
Then  she  walked  in  different  directions,  till  she  came  to  the  place 
from  whence  the  head  had  been  taken.  Then  she  found  the  magic 
bow  and  arrows,  where  the  young  men,  ignorant  of  their  qualities, 
had  left  them.  She  thought  to  herself  that  she  would  find  her  broth- 
er's head,  and  came  to  a  piece  of  rising  ground,  and  there  saw  some 
of  his  paints  and  feathers.  These  she  carefully  put  up,  and  hung 
upon  the  branch  of  a  tree  till  her  return. 

At  dusk  she  arrived  at  the  first  lodge  of  a  very  extensive  village. 
Here  she  used  a  charm,  common  among  Indians  when  they  wish  to 
meet  with  a  kind  reception.  On  applying  to  the  old  man  and  woman 
of  the  lodge,  she  was  kindly  received.  She  made  known  her  errand. 
The  old  man  promised  to  aid  her,  and  told  her  the  head  was  hung 
up  before  the  council-fire,  and  that  the  chiefs  of  the  village,  with 
their  young  men,  kept  watch  over  it  continually.  The  former  are 
considered  as  manitoes.  She  said  she  only  wished  to  see  it,  and 
would  be  satisfied  if  she  could  only  get  to  the  door  of  the  lodge.  She 
knew  she  had  not  sufficient  power  to  take  it  by  force.  "  Come  with 
me,"  said  the  Indian,  "I  will  take  you  there."  They  went,  and  they 
took  their  seats  near  the  door.  The  council-lodge  was  filled  with 
warriors,  amusing  themselves  with  games,  and  constantly  keeping  up 
a  fire  to  smoke  the  head,  as  they  said,  to  make  dry  meat.  They  saw 
the  head  move,  and  not  knowing  what  to  make  of  it,  one  spoke  and 
said  :  "  Ha !  ha  !  It  is  beginning  to  feel  the  effects  of  the  smoke." 
The  sister  looked  up  from  the  door,  and  her  eyes  met  those  of  her 
brother,  and  tears  rolled  down  the  cheeks  of  the  head.  "  Well," 
said  the  chief,  "  I  thought  we  would  make  you  do  something  at  last. 
Look !  look  at  it  —  shedding  tears,"  said  he  to  those  around  him  ; 
and  they  all  laughed  and  passed  their  jokes  upon  it.  The  chief,  look- 
ing around,  and  observing  the  woman,  after  some  time  said  to  the  man 
who  came  with  her  :  "Who  have  you  got  there  ?  I  have  never  seen 
that  woman  before  in  our  village."  "  Yes,"  replied  the  man,  "  you 
have  seen  her  ;  she  is  a  relation  of  mine,  and  seldom  goes  out.  She 
stays  at  my  lodge,  and  asked  me  to  allow  her  to  come  with  me  to 
this  place."  In  the  centre  of  the  lodge  sat  one  of  those  young  men 
who  are  always  forward,  and  fond  of  boasting  and  displaying  them- 
selves before  others.     "  Why,"  said  he,  "  I  have  seen  her  often,  and 


APPENDIX  D.  623 

it  is  to  this  lodge  I  go  almost  every  night  to  court  her."  All  the 
others  laughed  and  continued  their  games.  The  young  man  did 
not  know  he  was  telling  a  lie  to  the  woman's  advantage,  who  by  that 
means  escaped. 

She  returned  to  the  man's  lodge,  and  immediately  set  out  for  her 
own  country.  Coming  to  the  spot  where  the  bodies  of  her  adopted 
brothers  lay,  she  placed  them  together,  their  feet  toward  the  east. 
Then  taking  an  axe  which  she  had,  she  cast  it  up  into  the  air,  cry- 
ing out,  "  Brothers,  get  up  from  under  it,  or  it  will  fall  on  you." 
This  she  repeated  three  times,  and  the  third  time  the  brothers  all 
arose  and  stood  on  their  feet. 

Mudjikewis  commenced  rubbing  his  eyes  and  stretching  himself. 
"Why,"  said  he,  " I  have  overslept  myself."  "No,  indeed,"  said 
one  of  the  others,  "  do  you  not  know  we  were  all  killed,  and  that  it 
is  our  sister  who  has  brought  us  to  life  ?  "  The  young  men  took  the 
bodies  of  their  enemies  and  burned  them.  Soon  after,  the  woman 
went  to  procure  wives  for  them,  in  a  distant  country,  they  knew  not 
where  ;  but  she  returned  with  ten  young  women,  which  she  gave  to 
the  ten  young  men,  beginning  with  the  eldest.  Mudjikewis  stepped 
to  and  fro,  uneasy  lest  he  should  not  get  the  one  he  liked.  But  he 
was  not  disappointed,  for  she  fell  to  his  lot.  And  they  were  well 
matched,  for  she  was  a  female  magician.  They  then  all  moved  into 
a  very  large  lodge,  and  their  sister  told  them  that  the  women  must 
now  take  turns  in  going  to  her  brother's  head  every  night,  trying  to 
untie  it.  They  all  said  they  would  do  so  with  pleasure.  The  eldest 
made  the  first  attempt,  and  with  a  rushing  noise  she  fled  through  the 
air. 

Toward  daylight  she  returned.  She  had  been  unsuccessful,  as  she 
succeeded  in  untying  only  one  of  the  knots.  All  took  their  turns 
regularly,  and  each  one  succeeded  in  untying  only  one  knot  each 
time.  But  when  the  youngest  went,  she  commenced  the  work  as 
soon  as  she  reached  the  lodge  ;  although  it  had  always  been  occu- 
pied, still  the  Indians  never  could  see  any  one.  For  ten  nights  now, 
the  smoke  had  not  ascended,  but  filled  the  lodge  and  drove  them 
out.  This  last  night  they  were  all  driven  out,  and  the  young  woman 
carried  off  the  head. 

The  young  people  and  the  sister  heard  the  young  woman  coming 
high  through  the  air,  and  they  heard  her  saying  :  "  Prepare  the  body 
of  our  brother."     And  as  soon  as  they  heard  it,  they  went  to  a  small 


624  APPENDIX  D. 

lodge  where  the  black  body  of  Iamo  lay.  His  sister  commenced 
cutting  the  neck  part,  from  which  the  neck  had  been  severed.  She 
cut  so  deep  as  to  cause  it  to  bleed  ;  and  the  others  who  were  present, 
by  rubbing  the  body  and  applying  medicines,  expelled  the  blackness. 
In  the  mean  time  the  one  who  brought  it,  by  cutting  the  neck  of  the 
head,  caused  that  also  to  bleed. 

As  soon  as  she  arrived,  they  placed  that  close  to  the  body,  and,  by 
aid  of  medicines  and  various  other  means,  succeeded  in  restoring 
Iamo  to  all  his  former  beauty  and  manliness.  All  rejoiced  in  the 
happy  termination  of  their  troubles,  and  they  had  spent  some  time 
joyfully  together,  when  Iamo  said :  "  Now  I  will  divide  the  wam- 
pum ; "  and  getting  the  belt  which  contained  it,  he  commenced  with 
the  eldest,  giving  it  in  equal  portions.  But  the  youngest  got  the 
most  splendid  and  beautiful,  as  the  bottom  of  the  belt  held  the  rich' 
est  and  rarest. 

They  were  told  that,  since  they  had  all  once  died,  and  were  re- 
stored to  life,  they  were  no  longer  mortal,  but  spirits,  and  they  were 
assigned  different  stations  in  the  invisible  world.  Only  Mudjikewis's 
place  was,  however,  named.  He  was  to  direct  the  west  wind,  hence 
generally  called  Kebeyun,  there  to  remain  forever.  They  were  com- 
manded, as  they  had  it  in  their  power,  to  do  good  to  the  inhabitants 
of  the  earth,  and,  forgetting  their  sufferings  in  procuring  the  wam- 
pum, to  give  all  things  with  a  liberal  hand.  And  they  were  also  com- 
manded that  it  should  also  be  held  by  them  sacred  ;  those  grains  or 
shells  of  the  pale  hue  to  be  emblematic  of  peace,  while  those  of  the 
darker  hue  would  lead  to  evil  and  war. 

The  spirits  then,  amid  songs  and  shouts,  took  their  flight  to  their 
respective  abodes  on  high  ;  while  Iamo,  with  his  sister  Iamoqua, 
descended  into  the  depths  below. 


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